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THE  GERMAN  ARMY 

IN  WAR 


BY 

A.    HILLIARD    ATTERIDGE 

AUTHOR   OF    "FAMOUS    LAND    FIGHTS  " 


NEW    YORK 

McBRIDE,    NAST    &    COMPANY 

1915 


.  . 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

INTRODUCTION  AND  NOTE  ON  GERMAN 

NUMBERS          .....  v. 

I.    THE  MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY  .  n 

II.    DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  ARMY  SYSTEM  .  26 

III.  ARMY  ORGANISATION         .         .         .40 

IV.  PREPARATION  FOR  WAR    ...  56 
V.    ACTION  ON  DECLARATION  OF  WAR    .  74 

VI.    How  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT        .         .81 

VII.    GERMANY  ON  THE  DEFENSIVE  .          .  101 

VIII.    THE  GERMAN  LAW  OF  WAR       .         .  112 

IX.     GERMAN  IDEAS  ON  THE  INVASION  OF 

ENGLAND      .....  123 


330935 


INTRODUCTION 

JN  the  following  chapters  I  have  tried  to  give 
briefly  and  in  plain  untechnical  language  an 
account  of  the  origin  of  the  German  military 
system,  and  the  organisation  and  war  methods 
of  the  German  army.  I  trust  that  the  little  book 
will  prove  interesting  and  useful  to  readers  of 
the  war  news  and  to  many  of  our  young  soldiers 
who  are  now  training  to  meet  that  army  in  the 
field. 

I  have  endeavoured  to  make  the  book  a 
collection  of  facts,  with  only  so  much  discussion 
of  them  as  is  necessary  to  make  them  clear  to 
the  reader,  avoiding  as  far  as  possible  any  attempt 
at  criticism.  But  the  mere  statement  of  these 
facts  is  enough  to  show  that  the  German  army 
is  a  very  formidable  fighting  organisation.  And 
I  think  it  is  well  that  this  should  be  understood. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  underrate  an  opponent.  The 
Germans  made  this  mistake  with  regard  to  our  own 
gallant  army.  Some  writers  here  at  home  appear 
to  me  to  have  been  as  much  at  fault  in  their 
estimates  of  the  German  army  at  the  outset  of 
the  war. 

In  our  case  a  mistake  of  this  kind  has  very 
unfortunate  results.  In  the  first  place  it  does  an 
injustice  to  our  own  splendid  fighting  men.  If 
the  German  army  were  an  inefficient,  out-of-date 
war  machine,  if  it  sent  to  the  front  a  crowd  of 
blundering  leaders  and  half-hearted  soldiers, 
there  would  be  little  credit  due  to  those  who  have 
stood  up  so  gloriously  against  its  onset.  In  the 


vi        THE  GERMAN   ARMY   IN   WAR 

second  place,  unjustified  depreciation  of  our 
opponents  is  only  too  likely  to  make  men  think 
that  no  great  effort  will  be  needed  for  their 
final  overthrow.  Such  a  mistaken  estimate  is 
only  too  likely  to  lead  to  a  slackening  of  the 
effort  to  send  abundant  help  to  those  who  are 
bearing  the  brunt  of  the  battle. 

But  from  those  very  men  there  is  evidence 
enough  that  the  German  army  system  has  been 
quite  efficient  enough  to  produce  (i)  enormous 
masses  of  trained  soldiers,  (2)  and  these  so 
inspired  with  the  soldier  spirit  that  they  face 
death  unflinchingly  even  in  attacks  that  seem 
doomed  to  utter  failure.  To  quote  one  instance 
out  of  many,  the  official  "  Eye  Witness  '  with 
Sir  John  French's  headquarters  has  told  us  how, 
in  one  of  the  attacks  near  Ypres,  a  column  of 
young  soldiers  struggled  onward  amid  a  deadly 
fire  from  our  own  lines,  singing  as  they  came, 
renewing  the  attack  again  and  again,  and  only 
desisting  from  a  hopeless  effort  when  the  ground 
was  heaped  with  their  dead  and  wounded. 
Such  disciplined  courage  wins  the  admiration  of 
every  true  man.  Such  soldiers  and  such  an  army 
cannot  be  despised. 

But  here  let  me  say  that,  while  fully  recognising 
the  good  points  of  the  German  system  and  the 
German  army,  I  am  not  one  of  those  whose  study 
of  German  war  methods  has  led  them  to  prefer 
the  foreign  system  of  universal  service  to  our  own. 
On  the  contrary,  I  hold  that  under  our  voluntary 
system  we  have  produced  and  are  producing  the 
best  type  of  soldiers  in  the  world,  and  can  obtain 
as  many  of  them  as  we  need.  But  holding  that 


INTRODUCTION  vii 

view  I  also  hold  that  there  is  no  reason  to  shut 
one's  eyes  to  the  merits  of  the  German  system  or 
to  undervalue  the  soldierly  qualities  of  the  men 
it  has  produced.  So  little  is  this  the  case  that, 
to  our  great  gain,  we  have,  since  the  war  of  1870, 
been  to  some  extent  learners  from  Germany  in 
military  matters.  We  have  adopted  many  of 
the  methods  of  the  German  army,  but  we  have 
not  been  mere  slavish  imitators,  and  it  may  be 
said  that  we  have  "  bettered  the  instruction.'1 
France,  too,  has  been  a  pupil  of  Germany,  and 
has  adopted  much  more  of  the  German  system 
than  we  have  taken  into  our  own. 

In  dealing  with  the  German  interpretation  of 
the  law  of  war,  I  have  stated  what  is  the  practice 
of  German  commanders  in  the  field,  and  I  hope 
I  have  made  my  meaning  so  clear  that  no  reader 
will  mistake  my  explanation  for  a  defence,  or 
even  a  palliation,  of  German  misdeeds  in  Belgium. 
The  concluding  chapter  on  German  ideas  on  the 
invasion  of  this  country  might  easily  have  been 
made  longer,  but  I  have  purposely  kept  to  the 
one  decisive  point — the  absolute  futility  of  all 
and  any  project  for  anything  more  than  a  mere 
local  raid,  so  long  as  our  navy  holds  the  command 
of  the  sea.  That  it  will  hold  it  to  the  end  of 
this  war,  and  long  after  this  war  has  become  a 
memory,  I  have  not  the  shadow  of  a  doubt. 
Though  a  writer  of  military  history,  I  believe  in 
the  primary  importance  of  Sea  Power,  and  our 
navy  embodies  and  exercises  that  powrer  in  the 
highest  degree — to  a  degree,  indeed,  that  has 
never  been  surpassed,  perhaps  never  equalled, 
in  the  long  annals  of  war. 


viii     THE   GERMAN  ARMY    IN  WAR 

At  the  outset  of  the  war  there  was  a  tendency 
to  underestimate  the  forces  we  had  to  meet. 

The  peace  strength  of  the  German  army  before 
the  war  was  36,300  officers  and  754,600  N.C.O.'s 
and  men,  a  total  of  nearly  800,000  of  all  ranks. 

The  mobilisation  of  the  twenty-five  Army  Corps 
and  the  Cavalry  Divisions  would  give  a  first 
fighting  line  of  over  a  million  men.  But  this 
force  was  at  once  doubled  by  forming  new  reserve 
corps  out  of  reservists  of  the  first  levy  of  the 
Landwehr.  Before  the  end  of  August  second 
reserve  units  were  being  formed  for  several  of 
the  corps  ;  the  Landsturm  and  the  second  levy 
of  the  Landwehr  were  called  out,  and  the  recruits 
who  would  normally  be  enrolled  in  September 
were  enlisted — at  least  600,000  men. 

It  is  estimated  that  by  the  end  of  August, 
Germany  had  about  four  millions  of  men  under  arms . 

But  there  remained  a  large  reserve  of  men  fit  for 
military  service  but  mostly  untrained.  Only  an  ap- 
proximate estimate  of  their  numbers  can  be  made. 

In  round  numbers  the  male  population 
of  Germany  amounts  to  thirty-twro  millions. 
According  to  data  given  in  the  November  issue 
of  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  United  Service 
Institution,  the  approximate  proportions  for  the 
various  ages  would  be  : — 

Percentage,  Numbers. 

Under  15  years        . .     . .   33   . .  . .  10,560,000 

From  15-40  years    . .      . .  42   . .  . .  13,440,000 

From  40-60  years    . .      . .   15   . .  . .  4,800,000 

Over  60  years 10   . .  . .  3,200,000 

Total     loo  , .      . .     32,000,000 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

The  classes  from  15  to  60  years  of  age  give  a 
total  of  over  eighteen  millions.  Deducting  one 
third  (six  millions)  for  youths  too  young  to  serve, 
and  older  men  incapable  of  military  service,  or 
debarred  by  necessary  civil  work,  we  have  twelve 
million  possible  recruits.  With  four  millions  under 
arms  at  the  outset — the  reserve  would  be  eight 
millions,  mostly  untrained.  Two  millions  of  them 
are  said  to  have  been  enrolled  in  various  ways 
since  the  first  month  of  war. 

These  are,  of  course,  only  rough  estimates,  but 
they  show  that  there  must  still  be  an  abundance 
of  material  for  the  military  machine  of  the  Ger- 
man army ;  and  suggest  that  it  would  be  a 
dangerous  folly  to  relax  our  own  efforts  in 
recruiting  and  training  men  for  the  war. 


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THE  GERMAN  ARMY 

IN  WAR 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY 


THE   "  NATION    IN   ARMS  ' 


o 


N  October  I4th,  1806,  Napoleon  defeated  the 
Prussian  army  at  Jena.  Murat's  relentless 
pursuit  to  the  shores  of  the  Baltic  captured  or 
scattered  all  who  had  escaped  the  rout.  Nothing 
was  left  of  the  army,  which  had  lived  for  fifty 
years  on  the  fame  of  Frederick  the  Great,  except 
the  garrisons  of  a  few  fortresses.  In  the  following 
winter  the  defeat  of  Prussia's  ally,  the  Czar,  at 
Friedland,  completed  the  humiliation  of  the  House 
of  Hohenzollern.  By  the  Treaty  of  Tilsit  Prussia 
became  a  tributary  of  the  French  Empire.  And 
with  a  view  to  making  this  subjection  permanent 
an  article  of  the  treaty  provided  that  the  Prussian 
standing  army  should  be  reduced  to  42,000  men. 

Thanks,  however,  to  the  clear-sighted  action  of 
a  group  of  patriotic  men  this  disaster  became  the 


12        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

starting  point  of  a  new  epoch  of  national  progress 
for  Prussia.  To  the  reorganisation  of  the  country 
after  Jena  must  be  traced  the  making  of  the 
German  army  of  to-day,  and  indeed  the  origin 
of  the  military  systems  of  all  the  great  powers  of 
Continental  Europe. 

The  military  reorganisation  of  the  kingdom 
was  the  work  of  Scharnhorst  and  Gneisenau. 
Scharnhorst,  the  son  of  a  small  farmer,  had 
served  in  the  army  of  Hanover,  then  under  the 
British  Crown,  in  the  first  war  of  the  French 
Revolution.  In  1801,  he  transferred  his  services 
to  Prussia,  and  became  Commandant  of  the 
Training  School  for  Officers.  Taken  prisoner 
after  the  disaster  of  Jena,  he  was  exchanged  in 
time  to  fight  in  the  Battle  of  Eylau.  In  1807, 
he  was  put  at  the  head  of  the  Commission  for 
reorganising  the  army.  His  colleague,  Gneisenau, 
came  from  Prussian  Saxony.  He  saw  his  first 
war  service  among  the  German  troops  who 
were  employed  against  the  American  Colonists, 
under  the  English  flag.  On  his  return  to  Europe 
he  joined  the  Prussian  army,  and  fought  with 
distinction  in  the  campaign  of  Jena. 

Scharnhorst  was  the  author  of  the  plan  of  re- 
organisation adopted  in  1807.  Its  central  idea 
was  to  make  the  little  army  of  42,000  men,  which 
Prussia  was  allowed  to  keep  with  the  colours, 
not  a  standing  army  in  the  old  sense,  but  a 
training  school  through  which  a  large  number 
of  men  could  be  passed,  who  would  then  form 
a  reserve  that  could  be  called  up  for  service  when 
the  day  came  for  a  national  uprising  against  the 
French  domination  in  Germany.  Short  service 


MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY     13 

was  therefore  introduced.  The  plan  worked  so 
successfully  that  in  1813,  when  Prussia  joined 
the  coalition  against  Napoleon,  which  ended  in 
his  downfall,  the  army  of  42,000  men  was  at 
once  expanded  to  over  120,000  by  calling  up 
to  the  colours  old  soldiers  and  a  large  reserve 
of  trained  men  formed  since  1807. 

Scharnhorst  died  during  the  War  of  Liberation 
(as  the  Germans  call  the  war  of  1813-14).  But 
Gneisenau  lived  to  be  the  chief  director  of 
Prussian  strategy  in  the  field  during  these  cam- 
paigns, and  during  that  of  Waterloo.  Bliicher 
commanded  ;  his  reputation  as  an  old  soldier  of 
Frederick  the  Great,  his  personal  influence  with 
the  army,  his  untiring  energy,  made  him  the 
actual  leader  in  the  field.  But  Bliicher  was  a 
soldier  of  the  old  school.  His  fierce  hatred  of  the 
French  inspired  him  with  a  kind  of  furious  energy, 
and  made  the  "  drunken  old  dragoon '  (as 
Napoleon  called  him)  a  dangerous  enemy. 
Gneisenau  was  the  directing  mind  of  the  Prussian 
operations  in  his  capacity  of  Chief  of  the  Staff  to 
Bliicher. 

After  the  downfall  of  Napoleon,  it  was 
Gneisenau  who  carried  on  and  perpetuated  Scharn- 
horst's  work  of  reorganisation.  A  third  great 
soldier,  Clausewitz,  who  had  fought  in  the 
Prussian  and  Russian  armies  in  most  of  the 
campaigns  of  the  Revolution  and  the  Empire 
from  Valmy  to  Waterloo,  gave  the  Prussian  army, 
in  his  writings,  a  practical  theory  of  war  on 
which  it  has  acted  ever  since.  Clausewitz  was  one 
of  the  first  professors  of  the  school  of  war  founded 
by  Scharnhorst  in  1810  for  the  higher  training 


14        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

of  selected  officers,  and  he  was  its  director  from 
1818  to  1830.  This  school,  now  known  as  the 
Kriegs  Akademie  (War  Academy),  is  the  German 
Staff  College.  Its  teaching  staff  is  made  up  not 
only  of  soldiers,  but  also  of  civilian  experts. 
Thus,  for  instance,  Karl  Ritter,  one  of  the 
founders  of  modern  scientific  geography,  was  a 
professor  of  the  War  Academy  for  thirty-nine 
years,  and  during  this  time  organised  the 
remarkably  efficient  map  department  of  the 
General  Staff. 

The  basis  of  the  new  army  organisation  was 
universal  obligation  to  military  service.  This 
does  not  mean  that  every  man  served  in  the 
army,  but  that  on  reaching  the  age  of  twenty 
every  man  had  to  present  himself  at  the  re- 
cruiting centre  of  his  district,  and  the  army 
authorities  enlisted  as  many  men  as  were  required 
to  make  up  the  annual  contingent. 

The  recruits  thus  enrolled  served  for  three  or 
four  years.  They  were  then  passed  into  the 
reserve,  and  were  liable  to  be  called  up  on  a 
declaration  of  war  to  bring  up  the  first  line  of 
the  army  to  war  strength.  After  completing 
his  reserve  service,  the  Prussian  soldier  belonged 
for  some  years  more  to  a  second  line  army, 
known  as  the  Landwehr  (the  '  guards  of  the 
land  ").  The  Landwehr,  though  primarily  in- 
tended for  home  defence,  could  be  employed  for 
active  service  beyond  the  frontier,  and  were 
counted  upon  to  form  the  garrisons  and  guard 
the  line  of  communication  of  the  active  army. 

After  being  dismissed  from  the  Landwehr,  the 
Prussian  soldier  passed  into  the  Landsturm  (the 


MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY  15 


'  rising  of  the  country/'  the  '  levee  en  masse  "). 
This  force  was  the  third  line.  They  could  be 
called  to  arms  for  the  defence  of  Prussia  in  a 
great  emergency,  and  it  was  laid  down  that  in 
this  case  they  would  not  wear  uniforms,  but 
only  badges. 

For  some  sixty  years,  the  Prussian  army  was 
the  only  one  in  Europe  organised  on  the  system 
of  short  service  and  large  reserves.  Every  other 
army  was  formed  of  long-service  soldiers,  and 
it  was  the  fashion  to  talk  of  the  Prussian  army 
as  a  kind  of  militia,  largely  composed  of  half- 
trained  men  who  could  not  stand  up  against 
professional  soldiers. 

A  second  cardinal  principle  of  the  new  Prussian 
system  was  the  localisation  of  the  army,  and  its 
permanent  organisation  in  territorial  army  corps. 
Napoleon  had  organised  the  Grand  Army  in  a 
number  of  corps,  each  usually  commanded  by  one 
of  his  marshals.  But  these  corps  were  formed 
by  from  time  to  time  assigning  a  certain  number 
of  regiments  to  one  or  other  of  these  commands, 
and  the  composition  of  the  corps  varied  in  each 
new  war.  The  Prussian  army  corps  was  a  little 
army  complete  in  infantry,  cavalry  and  artillery, 
recruited  and  permanently  stationed  in  one  or 
other  of  the  provinces  of  the  kingdom.  The 
localisation  was  carried  even  further.  Each 
regiment  w7as  raised  in,  and  permanently  connected 
with,  a  town  or  a  group  of  villages.  The  result 
was  that  in  every  battalion  and  company,  in 
every  squadron  and  battery,  the  men  were 
neighbours  and  kinsfolk.  It  was  a  kind  of  adapta- 
tion of  the  old  tribal  system  to  modern  war,  and 


16        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

it  had  the  great  advantage  that  it  rendered 
mobilisation  a  fairly  simple  business.  The  men 
who  were  to  fight  side  by  side  gathered  in  their 
village,  went  into  the  nearest  town,  where  they 
found  their  friends  and  neighbours  beside  whom 
they  were  to  serve,  put  on  once  more  the  uniform 
of  the  regiment  in  which  they  had  received  their 
training,  and  found  themselves  under  a  colonel 
and  a  general  whom  they  had  often  seen  at  the 
head  of  the  troops  at  local  reviews  and  route 
marches. 

The  ideal  of  the  whole  organisation  was  that 
the  nation  should  be  ready  in  the  event  of  war 
to  bring  its  whole  manhood  into  the  field.  But 
during  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
this  ideal  was  far  from  being  realised.  The 
armies  of  all  the  powers  of  the  Continent  were 
kept  at  a  figure  far  below  that  of  the  later  years 
of  the  century,  and  Prussia  did  not  possess  the 
resources  or  feel  the  necessity  to  train  any  large 
proportion  of  the  men  who  were  each  year  liable 
to  service.  There  was  a  partial  mobilisation 
of  the  Prussian  army  in  1859,  during  the  war 
between  Napoleon  III.  and  Austria.  Prince 
William  of  Prussia,  afterwards  the  King  and  the 
first  of  the  new  German  Emperors,  was  then 
acting  as  regent  of  the  kingdom  on  account  of 
the  illness  of  Frederic  William  IV.  He  had 
devoted  his  whole  life  to  military  affairs,  and  as 
a  young  man  had  fought  against  Napoleon  in 
the  campaign  of  1814.  He  was  disappointed  at 
finding  that  the  mobilisation  took  a  considerable 
time,  and  did  not  give  the  numbers  which  had 
been  anticipated.  The  fact  was  that  during 


MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY     17 

long  years  of  peace  with  small  numbers  called  up 
each  year  to  the  colours,  the  military  system  of 
the  country  had  fallen  far  below  the  ideals  of 
its  founders. 

On  January  2nd,  1861,  Frederic  William  died, 
and  the  Crown  Prince  became  King  of  Prussia. 
He  had  already  formed  a  scheme  for  reorganising 
the  army,  increasing  its  effective  strength,  and 
making  the  process  of  mobilisation  more  rapid 
and  workmanlike.  He  meant  to  make  Prussia 
the  leading  military  power  of  Germany.  In 
carrying  out  this  work  he  was  assisted  by  three 
remarkable  men,  Von  Bismarck,  as  head  of  the 
Ministry,  Von  Roon,  as  Minister  of  War,  and  Von 
Moltke,  as  Chief  of  the  General  Staff.  The  new 
army  legislation  requiring,  as  it  did,  heavy 
financial  sacrifices  and  a  great  extension  of  the 
annual  levy  of  men,  excited  a  strong  opposition 
in  the  Prussian  Parliament.  For  four  years  Von 
Bismarck  carried  on  the  Government  in  defiance 
of  hostile  votes,  and  levied  taxes,  and  called  out 
men  for  service  without  Parliamentary  warrant. 
Your  votes  of  censure  are  of  no  effect,"  he  once 
said  to  the  Opposition.  You  imagine  that  you 
are  in  England  and  that  I  am  your  minister,  but 
you  are  in  Prussia,  and  I  am  the  minister  of  the 
King." 

The  reorganisation  of  the  army  was  carried 
out  on  the  lines  which  the  King  had  laid  down 
with  the  help  of  Von  Roon  and  Von  Moltke. 
The  latter  had  been  Chief  of  the  General  Staff 
since  King  William  became  regent  in  1858. 
He  had  made  it  a  centre  of  information  on  which 
he  based  plans  for  mobilisation  and  concentration 

B 


i8        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

in  the  event  of  a  quarrel  with  any  of  Prussia's 
neighbours.  At  the  same  time  he  directed  the 
instruction  of  the  officers  and  the  training  of  the 
army,  and  he  gathered  around  him  a  singu- 
larly able  group  of  war  leaders,  who  were 
thoroughly  familiar  with  his  ideas  and  could  be 
trusted  to  act  on  their  own  initiative  in  the  spirit 
of  the  military  doctrine  he  had  taught  them. 
The  remarkable  thing  is  that  except  for  a  brief 
and  disastrous  campaign  with  the  Turkish  army 
in  Western  Asia,  he  had  never  taken  part  in 
actual  operations  in  the  field,  but  he  had  made 
a  close  study  of  the  great  campaign,  and  under 
his  direction  the  Prussian  army  manoeuvres 
became  a  real  school  of  war  at  a  time  when  in 
other  armies  such  manoeuvres  were  either  non- 
existent or  were  mere  theatrical  displays. 

Prussia  was  at  this  time  a  member  of  the  old 
German  Confederation  formed  in  1815,  and  made 
up  of  some  sixty  kingdoms,  principalities,  grand 
duchies,  duchies  and  free  cities  whose  common 
interests  were  regulated  in  the  annual  meeting  of 
the  Diet  of  the  Confederation  at  Frankfurt-on- 
the-Main.  Austria  and  Prussia  had  long  been 
rivals  for  the  headship  of  the  confederation,  to 
which  Austria  belonged  in  right  of  its  German 
lands. 

Bismarck's  policy  was  directed  to  excluding  the 
Austrians  from  the  Confederation  and  making 
Prussia  the  dominant  power  in  a  new  Germany 
united  under  her  headship.  It  was  for  this  the 
reorganised  army  was  wanted.  In  the  winter  of 
1863  the  Frankfurt  Diet  asserted  the  claim  of 
the  Confederation  to  occupy  .the  Danish  duchies 


MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY     19 

of  Schleswig-Holstein  and  entrusted  the  execution 
of  this  resolution  to  a  contingent  to  be  drawn  from 
the  armies  of  the  minor  powers.  Bismarck  over 
rode  the  decision,  and  arranged  with  Vienna  that 
the  occupation  of  the  duchies  should  be  carried 
out  by  Austrian  and  Prussian  contingents.  On 
the  ist  of  February,  1864,  the  Austrians  under 
Gablenz,  and  the  Prussians  under  Prince  Frederic 
Charles,  crossed  the  Danish  frontier.  The  Danes 
were  able  to  make  only  a  hopeless  resistance, 
which  came  to  an  end  in  the  early  summer.  It 
was  the  first  campaign  of  the  new  Prussian  army, 
and  the  Prussians  did  most  of  the  fighting,  such 
as  it  was.  But  the  war  was  a  small  affair.  The 
Danes  had  less  than  46,000  men  in  the  field, 
the  Allies  56,000,  of  whom  more  than  35,000 
were  Prussians  (about  the  strength  of  a  single 
army  corps),  and  very  few  people  realised  how 
efficiently  the  little  army  had  done  its  work. 
Attention  was  chiefly  attracted  by  the  fact  that 
the  infantry  was  armed  with  a  rather  clumsy 
kind  of  breechloader  adopted  in  1855.  The 
Prussian  army  was  then  the  only  one  in  Europe 
which  possessed  such  a  weapon,  and  conservative 
military  opinion  in  other  countries  set  little  value 
on  it.  It  was  said  that  it  was  too  complicated, 
liable  to  get  out  of  order,  and  certain  to  lead  to 
useless  waste  of  ammunition,  which  might  leave 
whole  battalions  without  a  shot  to  fire  when  the 
crisis  of  the  fight  arrived. 

This  Danish  war  of  1864  gave  Prussia  the  port 
of  Kiel,  and  made  the  future  North  Sea  canal 
possible.  But  it  was  not  till  two  years  later  that 
Prussia  came  into  assured  possession  of  these 


20        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

conquests.  There  was  a  quarrel  with  Austria  and 
the  South  German  States  as  to  the  division  of 
the  spoil.  The  result  was  the  war  of  1856,  when 
for  the  first  time  Europe  realised  that  the  re- 
organised Prussian  army  was  a  singularly  for- 
midable fighting  force. 

When  the  challenge  was  thrown  down  by 
Berlin  to  Vienna  the  general  opinion  throughout 
the  neutral  countries  of  Europe  was  that  the  war 
would  end  in  disaster  for  Prussia,  despite  the 
help  of  Italy  as  an  ally.  Austria,  after  detaching 
150,000  men  to  hold  Venetia  against  the  Italians, 
would  be  able  to  put  some  300,000  men  in  line 
in  the  north,  this  army  including  the  Saxon 
forces  which  retired  across  the  frontier  of  Bohemia 
at  the  outset  of  the  war.  Hanover  and  the 
South  German  States  would  be  able  to  place 
another  army  of  120,000  men  in  the  field.  Thus 
at  the  outset  of  the  war  there  would  be  420,000 
men  mobilised  by  Austria  and  her  German  allies 
against  Prussia,  who  could  count  on  mobilising 
at  the  utmost  some  350,000  men,  and  the  idea 
still  was  widely  prevalent  that  these  350,000 
Prussians  were  little  better  than  a  short  service 
militia  force  who  would  make  but  a  poor  stand 
against  the  Austrian  armies. 

Von  Moltke  struck  swiftly  and  surely ;  50,000 
men  were  detached  to  deal  with  the  Hanoverians 
and  South  Germans.  Whatever  the  result  here 
it  would  not  decisively  affect  the  issue.  If  the 
main  Austrian  army  could  be  beaten  the  minor 
states  could  be  subsequently  disposed  of  ;  300,000 
men  were  concentrated  in  three  armies  on  the 
frontiers  of  Bohemia,  and  entered  Austrian 


MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY     21 

territory  on  the  convergent  lines  of  advance 
that  brought  them  into  simultaneous  action  on 
the  battlefield  of  Sadowa.  On  July  4th  the 
great  battle  was  fought  that  fixed  the  future  of 
Germany  and  revealed  to  the  world  the  fighting 
efficiency  of  the  Prussian  army.  It  was  the 
greatest  battle  since  Leipzig.  The  numbers 
engaged  were  fairly  equal,  220,000  Prussians 
against  215,000  Austrians  and  Saxons,  but  in 
eight  hours  the  Allies  were  hopelessly  beaten. 
The  victory  cost  the  Prussians  about  9,000  killed 
and  wounded,  that  is  4  per  cent,  of  the  force 
engaged,  and  a  trifling  loss.  The  beaten  army 
left  more  than  23,000  men  killed  and  wounded 
on  the  field,  and  the  Prussians  made  more  than 
12,000  prisoners  and  took  187  guns.  There  was 
no  more  serious  fighting.  In  seven  weeks  from 
the  outbreak  of  hostilities  the  war  was  over. 
Austria  had  agreed  to  withdraw  from  all  inter- 
ference in  German  affairs.  The  old  German 
Confederation  disappeared.  Prussia  annexed 
Hanover  and  several  of  the  other  northern 
states  that  had  opposed  her,  and  bound  the  rest 
to  her  policy  by  the  formation  of  a  "  North  German 
Confederation/'  The  southern  states  were  com- 
pelled to  enter  into  an  offensive  and  defensive 
alliance  with  the  new  Confederation,  and  Prussia 
thus  realised  her  policy  of  becoming  the  dominant 
power  of  a  new  Germany. 

'  Nothing  succeeds  like  success.'3  The  Bis- 
marckian  policy  now  became  popular  in  Prussia, 
and  in  the  rest  of  Germany  there  was  a  steady 
growth  of  the  new  theory  that  the  future  of  the 
country  depended  on  union  under  the  strong 


22        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

headship  of  the  Hohenzollerns  linked  with  the 
preservation  of  a  certain  measure  of  autonomy 
for  the  minor  states.  The  German  army  organisa- 
tion was  extended  throughout  the  annexed 
territories  and  the  northern  states.  In  virtue  of 
the  alliance  treaties,  inspecting  generals  from 
Berlin  introduced  reforms  in  the  Prussian  direction 
into  the  armies  of  South  Germany. 

In  1867  France,  then  under  the  rule  of  Napoleon 
III.,  was  on  the  verge  of  a  quarrel  with  Prussia 
over  the  question  of  Luxemburg.  The  rupture 
was  averted  by  a  conference  and  an  arrangement 
to  dismantle  the  fortifications  and  neutralise  the 
little  state.  But  on  both  sides  of  the  Rhine  it 
was  recognised  that  the  conflict  between  France 
and  the  new  military  power  created  by  Prussia 
in  Germany  was  only  deferred.  The  war  came 
suddenly  in  July,  1870.  Napoleon  III.  and  his 
advisers  had  hoped  that  the  South  German  States 
which  had  fought  against  Prussia  four  years 
before  would  now  revolt  against  her  headship, 
and  that  Austria  would  take  the  opportunity 
of  avenging  Sadowa.  But  all  Germany  rallied 
to  the  call  of  the  aged  Prussian  King.  The 
rupture  with  France  was  hailed  as  an  occasion 
for  cementing  a  new  German  unity.  Before  the 
French  armies  were  ready  to  move  the  united 
armies  of  Prussia  and  South  Germany,  384,000 
strong,  crossed  the  frontier  in  the  first  week  of 
August.  By  the  first  week  of  September  one  of 
the  imperial  armies  of  France  was  blockaded  in 
Metz  ;  the  other,  with  the  Emperor  at  its  head, 
had  been  forced  to  surrender  at  Sedan.  Once 
more  Prussia  had  struck  swiftly  and  surely.  In 


MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY   23 

vain  the  war  was  prolonged  by  new  levies  in 
France  until  far  into  the  end  of  the  following 
winter.  Germany  poured  more  than  a  million 
men  across  the  Rhine.  Paris  was  starved  into 
surrender,  and  the  French  field  armies  driven  back 
northwards,  westwards  and  southwards.  In  the 
first  days  of  January  the  King  of  Prussia  was 
proclaimed  German  Emperor  at  Versailles,  and 
at  the  close  of  the  war  Alsace  and  the  greater 
part  of  Lorraine  were  annexed.  Metz  and 
Strassburg  became  German  fortresses,  and  the 
Prussian  system  was  extended  to  the  armies  of 
all  the  German  states.  The  German  army  came 
definitely  into  existence  as  a  single  force  under 
the  direction  of  the  Emperor  and  the  General 
Staff  at  Berlin. 

The  three  wars  of  1864,  1866  and  1870  had 
proved  the  value  of  the  military  tradition  in- 
augurated by  vScharnhorst  and  Gneisenau,  pro- 
vided with  a  doctrine  of  war  by  Clausewitz,  and 
perfected  in  practical  working  by  Von  Moltke. 
The  Emperor  William  I.  had  lived  through  the 
whole  of  this  evolution  and  had  done  much  to 
guide  it.  The  new  Germany  had  been  made  by 
the  sword.  To  use  Bismarck's  phrase  it  had  been 
built  up  '  with  blood  and  iron/'  and  the  result 
of  the  process  had  been  the  creation  of  an  armed 
nation  that  had  put  more  than  a  million  fighting 
men  in  the  field.  It  was  recognised  that  the 
position  thus  won  could  be  held  only  by  main- 
taining and  perfecting  the  organisation  that  had 
made  such  results  possible. 

£  Of  the  further  development  of  the  German 
army,  and  of  the  methods  by  which  it  had  secured 


24        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

and  hoped  to  perpetuate  its  success,  more  will 
presently  be  said.  Here  it  will  be  interesting  to 
note  the  stages  of  the  Prussian  and  the  German 
army's  growth  as  marked  by  the  gradual  increase 
in  the  number  of  the  army  corps  that  form  the 
first  battle  line. 

In  1866  the  Prussian  army  was  made  up  of  the 
Guards  Corps  and  eight  territorial  corps,  thus 
localised  : — 

ist  Corps,  Prussia  ;  2nd  Corps,  Pomerania  ;  3rd 
Corps,  Brandenburg  ;  4th  Corps,  the  middle  Elbe 
district,  headquarters  at  Magdeburg  ;  5th  Corps, 
the  province  of  Posen  ;  6th  Corps,  Silesia  ;  yth 
Corps,  Westphalia  ;  8th  Corps,  the  Rhineland. 

Between  1866  and  1870,  when  Prussia  extended 
her  army  system  to  the  annexed  territories  and 
the  other  lands  of  the  North  German  Confedera- 
tion, four  more  army  corps  were  formed, 
namely  :  gth  Corps,  Schleswig  Holstein  and  the 
adjacent  coast  districts  ;  loth  Corps,  Hanover  ; 
nth  Corps,  Hesse,  etc.,  headquarters,  Kassel ; 
I2th  Corps,  Saxony.  The  Bavarian  army  was 
organised  in  two  corps  separately  numbered. 

In  1871,  after  the  war  with  France,  the  following 
new  corps  were  organised  : — I3th  Corps,  Wurtem- 
berg  ;  i4th  Corps,  Baden  ;  I5th  Corps,  Alsace  ; 
i6th  Corps,  Lorraine. 

In  more  recent  years  by  sub-dividing  existing 
districts  six  additional  army  corps  were  formed, 
mostly  on  the  eastern  and  western  frontiers. 
These  were  the  I7th  Corps  in  West  Prussia,  the 
1 8th  Corps  in  Hesse,  the  igth  in  the  kingdom  of 
Saxony,  and  a  3rd  Corps  in  the  kingdom  of 
Bavaria,  and  at  a  later  stage  the  2oth  Corps 


MAKING  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY     25 

in  East  Prussia,  with  headquarters  at  Allenstein, 
and  the  2ist  in  the  Rhin eland,  with  headquarters 
at  Saarbruck. 

Thus,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  present  war,  the 
first  line  of  the  German  army  was  formed  of 
twenty-five  army  corps,  namely,  the  Prussian 
Guards  Corps,  the  twenty-one  German  Corps,  and 
the  three  Bavarian  Army  Corps.  Taking  the 
fighting  force  of  a  German  Army  Corps  at  40,000 
men,  this  would  give  a  first  line  of  a  million, 
without  counting  the  cavalry  divisions. 


CHAPTER  II 
DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  ARMY  SYSTEM 

AT  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic  Wars  the  popu- 
lation of  the  lands  now  included  in  the 
German  Empire  was  about  25,000,000.  When  the 
empire  was  proclaimed  in  1871,  the  population 
was  in  round  numbers  40,000,000.  The  last 
census  of  the  empire  taken  on  December  ist,  1910, 
gave  a  grand  total  of  64,925,993,  so  that  the 
German  empire  has  now  a  population  of  about 
68,000,000.  It  is  estimated  that  in  any  given 
year  the  men  reaching  the  age  of  twenty,  and  thus 
becoming  liable  to  military  service,  are  about  one 
per  cent,  of  the  population.  Thus,  while  in  1871, 
at  the  close  of  the  war  with  France,  there  would 
be  about  400,000  young  men  liable  to  service  in 
that  year,  the  number  in  any  year  since  1910  would 
be  650,000.*  In  forty  years  the  growth  of  the 
population  has  thus  increased  the  available 
number  of  recruits  by  a  quarter  of  a  million. 

It  has  already  been  noted  that  the  Wehrpflicht 
(duty  of  defence),  as  the  Germans  call  the  universal 

*  In  these  estimates  an  allowance  is  made  for  men  not  up 
to  the  physical  standard  or  otherwise  disqualified  for  the 
army.  See  note  in  Introduction  on  the  number  of  men 
available  for  military  service. 

26 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  ARMY  SYSTEM     27 

liability  to  military  service,  does  not  mean  that 
every  man  liable  to  serve  is  actually  embodied 
in  the  army.  Each  year  the  Ministry  of  War 
and  the  General  Staff  fix  the  number  of  recruits 
to  be  called  up. 

In  Germany,  as  in  all  countries  where  universal 
liability  to  service  exists,  careful  registers  are 
kept  of  the  men  in  every  town  and  district. 
One  cannot  remove  from  one  place  to  another, 
or  even  change  one's  place  of  residence  in  the 
same  town  without  giving  immediate  notice 
to  the  police.  In  the  year  in  which  his  twentieth 
birthday  occurs,  a  young  man  must  present 
himself  at  a  recruiting  depot,  as  otherwise  he  is 
at  once  classed  as  a  deserter.  There  is  a  medical 
examination,  and  if  he  passes  this  the  recruiting 
officers  decide  whether  they  want  him  or  not. 
In  the  earlier  years  of  the  empire  a  considerable 
proportion  of  young  men  were  not  actually 
enlisted,  but  the  men  who  are  thus  dismissed 
to  their  homes  still  belong,  in  a  certain  sense,  to 
the  army.  Until  middle  life  is  passed  they 
are  said  to  belong  to  the  Ersatz  Reserve.  The 
term  might  be  roughly  translated  '  supple- 
mentary reserve."  They  are  untrained,  but  their 
obligation  to  serve  still  exists,  and  the  Govern- 
ment can  call  them  up  on  an  emergency.  This 
is  not  usually  done,  but  volunteers  are  called 
for  from  this  large  mass  of  untrained  material. 
It  is  said  that  during  the  present  war  there  have 
been  a  million  voluntary  enlistments  from  the 
men  of  the  Ersatz. 

Naturally  the  recruiting  officers  select  for  the 
army  the  best  of  the  material  supplied  by  the 


28        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

annual  contingent  of  men  liable  for  service, 
and  the  proportion  of  men  thus  taken  has  steadily 
risen  ever  since  1871.  This  has  been  the  result 
of  the  adoption  of  the  principle  of  universal 
service  by  all  the  Continental  nations  and  the 
continual  growth  of  European  armies. 

The  first  stage  in  this  race  of  armaments  was 
the  reorganisation  of  the  French  army  on  the 
German  model,  and  the  substitution  of  universal 
service  in  France  for  the  older  system  of  con- 
scription and  paid  substitutes. 

The  first  great  increase  of  the  German  army 
was  made  by  the  new  military  law  of  1880. 
The  preamble  of  the  law  set  forth  that  the 
military  reforms  introduced  into  neighbouring 
states  made  an  expansion  of  the  army  necessary. 
'  Germany,  with  an  immense  frontier,  which  is 
also  that  of  three  great  and  four  smaller  powers, 
must  be  ever  ready  to  defend  her  freedom  and 
security." 

It  would  therefore  be  necessary  to  increase  the 
number  of  units  in  the  army  and  the  annual 
contingents  of  trained  men. 

There  was  a  further  increase  in  1887,  and  in 
1890  new  army  corps  were  formed  and  the 
peace  strength  of  the  army  was  raised  to  nearly 
half  a  million.  Three  years  later  the  Govern- 
ment announced  a  further  increase,  declaring  that 
the  time  was  come  when  all  men  really  fit  for 
service  would  have  to  be  employed  in  the  army. 
Hitherto  the  recruit  on  joining  had  served  for 
three  years  with  the  colours.  It  was  now  decided 
to  reduce  the  period  of  training  to  two  years 
for  all  branches  of  the  service,  except  the  cavalry 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  ARMY  SYSTEM  29 

and  the  batteries  of  horse  artillery  attached  to  it. 
The  two  years'  service  would  mean  that  year 
after  year  a  larger  number  of  men  would  be 
passed  into  the  reserve  of  the  army.  The  peace 
strength  was  raised  to  over  500,550  men,  and 
it  was  estimated  that  after  the  new  law  had  been 
a  few  years  in  operation,  the  available  reserves 
would  be  about  four  millions. 

Under  the  system  thus  established,  a  man,  on 
joining  the  army  at  the  age  of  twenty,  served  for 
two  years  with  the  colours,  or  for  three  years, 
if  he  was  allotted  to  the  cavalry,  or  four  if  he 
was  allotted  to  the  horse  artillery.  His  years  of 
service  with  the  colours  were  a  time  of  strenuous 
and  unceasing  training.  He  had  to  be  made 
into  a  soldier  before  being  dismissed  to  the 
Reserve.  The  total  period  of  service  in  the  first 
line  was  seven  years.  And  thus,  between  the 
age  of  twenty  and  twenty-seven,  the  years  of 
active  and  reserve  service  were  thus  distributed  : — 

With  the  Colours.  In  the  Reserve. 

Horse  Artillery         4  years.  3  years. 

Cavalry  3  4 "     „ 

All  other  arms          2       ,,  5       „ 

During  his  term  of  reserve  service,  the  soldier 
is  liable  to  be  called  up  for  short  periods  of 
training,  not  exceeding  eight  weeks,  and  always 
including  the  period  of  the  great  manoeuvres. 
At  the  age  of  twenty-seven,  the  German  soldier 
passed  out  of  the  first  line  army. 

Then  until  the  age  of  thirty-nine,  he  belonged 
to  the  second  line  army,  or  Landwehr.  Originally 


30        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

a  territorial  army  of  home  defence  force,  the 
Landwehr  is  liable  to  be  called  out  for  service 
beyond  the  frontiers,  either  in  the  actual  righting 
line,  or  for  the  work  of  guarding  the  lines  of 
communication  and  supplying  garrisons  to 
captured  fortresses.  In  the  war  with  France  in 
1870,  some  of  the  hardest  fighting  was  done  by 
the  Landwehr  divisions.  In  the  German  army 
of  to-day,  the  men  from  twenty-seven  to  thirty- 
two  years  of  age,  who  form  what  is  called  the 
first  "  Ban/'  or  levy  of  the  Landwehr,  are  practi- 
cally a  second  line  of  reserve  for  the  field  army. 
During  their  five  years  they  have  twice  been  called 
out  for  a  few  days'  training.  Their  service  in 
the  active  army  is  still  recent,  and  under  modern 
conditions  they  can  still  be  classed  as  young  men. 
With  a  couple  of  hundred  thousand  men  passing 
from  the  first  line  army  into  the  Landwehr  every 
year  there  are  about  a  million  of  these  Landwehr 
men  of  the  first  levy.  After  the  first  five  years 
the  Landwehr  man  is  not  called  out  to  service, 
except  in  time  of  actual  war.  For  seven 
years  of  his  life,  from  the  age  of  thirty-two  to 
thirty-nine,  he  is  in  the  second  levy  of  the  Land- 
wehr. His  name  is  kept  on  regular  lists  in  which 
the  men  are  allotted  to  the  units  into  which  they 
are  to  be  formed  on  mobilisation.  Nothing  is 
left  to  be  improvised  at  the  last  moment.  In 
England  at  the  present  time,  we  are  improvising 
second  and  third  line  armies.  The  German 
military  system  gives  the  country  these  armies 
already  organised  when  war  is  declared.  The 
reservists  join  the  battalions,  squadrons  and 
batteries  of  the  first  line  army,  and  these  move 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  ARMY  SYSTEM    31 

away  to  the  frontier.  Hundreds  of  thousands 
of  reservists  are  available  who  are  not  required 
to  bring  these  first  line  units  up  to  war  strength. 
There  are  more  of  them  than  need  be  kept  in 
the  depots  to  make  up  the  first  losses  in  the  field. 
This  surplus  of  reservists,  with  the  men  of  the 
first  levy  of  the  Landwehr,  are  available  to  form 
at  once  a  number  of  reserve  corps  and  divisions 
for  the  first  fighting  line.  In  the  present  war  it 
is  said  that  during  the  first  weeks  every  army 
corps  in  the  German  army  was  thus  duplicated 
by  a  reserve  corps,  so  that  in  all  fifty  army 
corps,  or  over  two  millions  of  fighting  men  were 
immediately  available  for  the  battle  line. 

The  second  levy  of  the  Landwehr  supplies 
another  army  which  can  be  used  for  the  line  of 
communications,  garrison  duty  and  the  like, 
or  which,  after  a  brief  period  of  training,  can 
supply  complete  units  to  the  fighting  line.  But 
this  does  not  exhaust  the  forces  that  become 
available  in  the  second  stage  of  mobilisation. 
There  are  over  600,000  men  who,  in  any  given 
year,  are  awaiting  the  call  to  the  colours  as 
recruits.  Instead  of  having  to  appeal  to  them 
to  enlist,  the  War  Office  by  signing  an  order  can 
bring  this  huge  army  of  recruits  into  the  depots 
and  barracks.  By  anticipating  the  call  to  arms 
of  the  following  year  and  summoning  to  the 
colours  recruits  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  at  least 
another  600,000  are  available. 

These  huge  numbers  do  not  exhaust  the 
resources  of  the  German  empire  in  men.  After 
passing  out  of  the  Landwehr  at  the  age  of  thirty- 
nine  the  German  soldier  has  completed  his  full 


32        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

term  of  service  in  the  first  and  second  line  of  the 
army,  but  for  six  years  more,  that  is  until  he 
reaches  the  age  of  forty-five,  he  belongs  to  a  third 
line,  the  Lands! urm.  This  is  a  home  defence 
force,  and  includes  theoretically  not  only  these 
trained  men,  but  all  the  untrained  men  of  the 
Ersatz  Reserve  up  to  the  age  of  forty-five.  Prac- 
tically, however,  the  Landsturm,  who  are  called 
out  for  service,  are  the  trained  men.  As  has 
been  already  noted,  recruits  are  obtained  from 
the  Ersatz  by  voluntary  enlistment  during  the 
war.  The  Landsturm  is  supposed  to  be  only  a 
home  defence  force,  but  in  the  present  war 
Landsturm  units  have  been  used  for  garrison  work 
beyond  the  frontiers. 

After  the  passing  of  the  Army  Bill  of  1893, 
General  Von  der  Goltz  wrote  that  under  the 
organisation  it  introduced,  and  by  the  establish- 
ment of  the  two  years'  colour  service  for  the 
greater  part  of  the  army,  "  Germany  had  arrived 
as  nearly  as  the  circumstances  of  the  time  would 
permit  at  the  desired  object,  namely,  to  bring 
into  the  ranks  every  man  capable  of  serving  in 
the  army."  But  though  considerable  progress 
has  been  made  in  this  direction  the  following 
years  witnessed  an  increase  in  the  number  of 
army  corps  and  the  proportion  of  men  called  up 
each  year  for  training.  The  number  of  army 
corps  was  increased  to  twenty-five.  Those 
stationed  on  the  eastern  and  western  frontiers  of 
the  empire  were  kept  nearly  on  a  war  footing. 
The  strength  of  the  army  on  a  peace  footing 
rose  to  nearly  three-quarters  of  a  million,  and  in 
every  unit  the  number  of  officers  was  increased, 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  ARMY  SYSTEM    33 

so  as  to  provide  a  larger  reserve  of  leaders  for 
the  new  units  which  would  be  formed  on  a 
declaration  of  war.  In  the  first  years  of  the 
German  army  after  the  great  war  with  France, 
of  more  than  400,000  recruits  available  for  train- 
ing less  than  200,000  had  been  actually  embodied 
in  the  army.  With  the  expansion  of  the  system, 
in  the  forty  years  that  followed,  nearly  double 
this  number  of  men  could  be  brought  under 
training  each  year. 

So  far  we  have  spoken  only  of  the  recruiting 
of  the  rank  and  file  of  the  army.  If  millions 
of  men  are  to  be  placed  in  the  field  for  war, 
there  must  be  tens  of  thousands  of  officers  and 
non-commissioned  officers  to  lead  them.  The 
non-commissioned  officers  are  provided  partly 
by  promotion  in  the  ordinary  course,  and  partly 
from  a  special  class.  These  latter  are  young  men 
who,  without  waiting  to  be  called  up  at  the  age 
of  twenty,  join  the  army  at  the  age  of  eighteen, 
in  order  to  qualify  for  such  promotion.  They 
have  thus  two  years  of  longer  service,  and  are 
given  special  facilities  for  qualifying,  and  many 
of  them  are  allowed  to  prolong  their  army  service 
during  part  of  the  years  in  which  they  would 
ordinarily  be  in  the  Reserve.  There  is  a  second 
class  of  special  enlistment  provided  for  from  the 
very  beginning  of  the  Prussian  army  system  in 
1814.  The  Royal  Decree,  which  established 
universal  liability  service,  with  a  view  of  avoiding 
serious  interruption  in  the  professional  career 
of  men  of  the  more  educated  classes,  allowed 
those  who  could  produce  certain  certificates  of 
education,  or  a  preliminary  degree  of  a  university, 


34        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

to  volunteer  for  one  year  of  service  in  the  army 
under  special  conditions.  At  the  end  of  the  year 
they  would  have  to  satisfy  the  military  authorities 
that  they  had  so  far  profited  by  their  training 
as  to  be  capable  of  doing  the  work  of  a  non- 
commissioned officer  or  a  company  officer.  They 
then  passed  into  the  reserve,  thus,  under  the 
old  system,  saving  two  years  of  service  with  the 
colours,  and  returned  to  their  professional  work. 
This  class  supplies  a  reserve  of  non-commissioned 
officers  and  officers  for  the  first  line  army  and 
the  Landwchr. 

The  officers  of  the  army  are  recruited  partly 
from  military  schools  or  cadet  corps,  partly  by 
the  promotion  of  educated  young  men  who  join 
the  regiments  with  a  view  to  training  for  a 
commission.  In  every  regiment  the  officer,  on 
proposal  by  the  War  Ministry,  has,  in  the  first 
instance,  to  be  accepted  by  a  vote  of  his  future 
comrades.  Naturally,  care  is  taken  in  the 
selection  of  the  men,  so  that  an  adverse  vote  is 
a  rare  event.  After  leaving  the  army  numbers  of 
officers  keep  their  names  on  the  reserve  list  for 
the  first  line  or  are  posted  to  units  of  the  Landwehr 
or  Landsturm.  Staff  officers  belong  to  a  special 
class  trained  for  staff  duties,  and  usually  serving 
with  a  regiment  only  for  the  purpose  of  obtaining 
practical  experience  of  the  working  of  this  or 
that  special  arm  of  the  service.  In  Prussia  and 
all  the  German  states  there  are  a  large  number 
of  families  which  in  each  generation  give  most 
of  their  sons  commission  ranks  for  the  army. 
And  in  military  history,  from  the  wars  of  Frederick 
the  Great  down  to  the  present  conflict,  one  finds 


DEVELOPMENT   OF  ARMY   SYSTEM    35 

the  same  name  recurring  in  the  higher  command. 
In  a  huge  army,  like  that  of  Germany,  it  is  of 
course  impossible  that  the  same  standard  of 
excellence  should  be  found  amongst  all  the 
officers.  But  an  effort  is  made  to  keep  the 
standard  at  a  high  level  by  a  constant  weeding 
out  of  the  inefficient  or  the  failures.  After  each 
year's  manoeuvres,  numbers  of  officers  are  quietly 
passed  from  the  active  army  into  the  reserve  list. 
This  transfer  does  not  necessarily  imply  a  censure, 
for  a  new  military  year  of  work  begins  after  the 
September  manoeuvres,  and  this  is  the  time 
usually  chosen  by  any  officer  who  wishes  to 
retire.  But  in  many  cases  the  retirement  is 
not  voluntary,  and  this  weeding  out  process 
sometimes  places  on  the  reserve  list  Generals 
and  even  Princes  of  the  royal  houses,  who  have 
shown  that  they  are  incapable  of  coming  to  a 
decision  in  the  mimic  campaign,  and  handling 
masses  of  men  in  the  field,  under  the  conditions 
of  a  manoeuvre  campaign — conditions  which  are 
less  trying  than  those  of  war,  where  failure  would 
have  more  serious  consequences. 

In  an  army  in  which  most  of  the  men  in  the 
ranks  serve  for  only  two  years,  the  permanent 
element  is  supplied  by  the  officers  and  those  non- 
commissioned officers  who  prolong  their  term  of 
service.  On  them  it  depends  to  carry  on  the 
military  tradition.  The  first  line  of  the  army  in 
times  of  peace  is  a  vast  school  of  war  with  this 
permanent  body  of  teachers.  Each  autumn 
half  their  pupils  go  away  and  are  replaced  by 
the  new  recruits.  The  course  of  instruction  is 
a  short  one,  so  the  work  is  carried  on  at  high 
pressure. 


36        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

It  has  often  been  said  that  the  German  army 
is  too  much  of  a  machine,  that  the  whole  system 
is  so  rigid  that  men  and  officers  are  deprived  of 
all  initiative.  Every  great  army  must  be  some- 
thing of  a  machine,  and  there  always  is  the 
danger  of  routine  and  red  tape  destroying 
initiative.  The  old  Prussian  army  of  Frederick 
the  Great  was  certainly  one  of  the  most  rigid  of 
machines  ever  created  for  the  purpose  of  making 
each  individual  in  its  ranks  a  mere  passive  unit 
in  the  hands  of  the  higher  command.  It  is  from 
Frederick's  days  the  saying  dates  that  '  the 
Prussian  soldier  does  not  think,  he  only  obeys." 
In  the  battles  of  the  Seven  Years'  War,  when 
Frederick  won  his  great  victories,  everything 
depended  on  the  accurate  execution  of  drill 
movements  in  close  order.  There  was  a  narrow 
fighting  front  on  which  the  men  were  brought 
up  shoulder  to  shoulder  in  three-deep  lines  to 
deliver  their  volleys  of  musket  balls  in  rapid 
succession  by  word  of  command  at  short  range, 
and  then  charge  across  less  than  a  hundred 
yards  of  ground  with  the  bayonet.  The  work 
of  the  drill  ground  was  everything.  Unthinking 
mechanical  obedience  was  the  cardinal  virtue 
for  the  soldier,  only  a  general  or  a  colonel  need 
trouble  to  do  any  thinking.  The  Prussian  drill 
book  was,  after  Frederick's  victories,  supposed 
to  be  the  sum  of  military  knowledge.  It  became 
the  drill  book  of  both  the  British  and  the  French 
army  in  the  years  before  the  Great  Revolution. 

But  the  progress  of  war  and  battle  methods 
from  Napoleon's  days  to  our  own,  the  introduction 
of  new  weapons  and  tactics,  and  the  wide 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  ARMY  SYSTEM    37 

extension  of  the  battle  front,  have  made  mere  drill 
book  and  barrack  yard  work  only  the  intro- 
duction to  a  soldier's  training.  The  company 
officer,  the  sergeant,  and  even  the  private  soldier 
has  now  to  think,  and  often  decide  for  himself 
what  is  best  to  be  done.  The  important  point 
is  that  this  thinking  should  be  intelligent,  and 
inspired  by  a  common  tradition,  so  that  co- 
operation with  others  is  possible,  and  officers  and 
men  can  understand  what  orders  mean  without 
every  detail  being  explained,  and  when  and 
where  the  strict  letter  of  these  orders  may  be 
departed  from.  It  was  the  German  army  that 
first  set  up  as  a  standard  rule  of  conduct  the 
principle  that  no  subordinate  could  be  allowed 
to  plead  as  a  reason  for  failure  that  he  had 
followed  the  strict  letter  of  his  orders  ;  that,  on 
the  contrary,  he  must  judge  for  himself  when  an 
altered  situation  had  made  this  strict  letter  no 
longer  applicable.  Initiative,  within  certain 
necessary  limits,  is  therefore  not  only  permitted 
but  enjoined.  It  is  to  the  German  army  that 
we  also  owe  what  is  now  recognised  as  a  necessary 
working  rule  in  every  army  of  the  world,  namely, 
that  the  higher  commander  must  tell  his  officers 
not  how  they  are  to  perform  a  certain  operation, 
but  in  the  most  general  terms  what  is  the  task 
assigned  to  them,  leaving  it  to  them  to  select 
the  proper  measures  for  accomplishing  it.  Thus, 
in  the  war  of  1870,  Von  Moltke's  orders  to  the 
commanders  of  army  corps  took  up  only  a  few 
lines  of  writing,  merely  conveying  brief  informa- 
tion as  to  the  position  of  the  enemy  and  the 
point  on  which  the  corps  concerned  was  to 


38        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

move.  The  general  commanding  the  army  corps 
similarly  assigned  an  object  to  his  divisional 
commanders,  leaving  it  to  them  to  issue  their 
special  orders  to  their  subordinates,  and  in  the 
same  way  the  battalion  commander  left  it  to  his 
captains  to  choose  for  themselves  the  way  in 
which  their  company  should  work  once  they  had 
been  given  a  general  direction  as  to  what  was  to 
be  done.  There  was  thus  the  widest  room  for 
initiative,  and  in  the  higher  commands  the 
principle  was  everywhere  accepted  that  whatever 
orders  had  been  given,  once  fighting  began  the 
troops  engaged  must  be  supported  at  all  costs 
by  all  those  who  were  in  reach  of  the  scene  of 
action.  In  such  a  system  of  command,  there  is 
nothing  rigid  and  initiative  is  a  necessity. 

Of  the  working  methods  of  the  German  army 
more  will  be  said  in  a  later  chapter.  This  much 
must  be  granted — it  was  the  success  of  the 
Prussian  army  in  1870  that  changed  the  military 
methods  of  all  Europe,  and  in  our  own  army 
the  first  step  towards  the  gradual  evolution  of 
our  present  system  was  the  study  of  German 
methods  by  the  brilliant  group  of  officers  who 
were  associated  with  Lord  Wolseley  in  the  re- 
making of  our  army  in  the  last  thirty  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  There  may  have  been  at 
times  too  much  of  the  same  kind  of  mere  imitation 
that  made  the  spiked  helmet  copied  from  Prussia 
the  head-dress  of  our  infantry.  But  British  study 
of  German  methods  became  more  and  more 
independent  and  practical.  Nevertheless,  even 
in  recent  years,  we  have  been  making  new  reforms 
of  lines  originally  struck  out  by  the  soldiers  of 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  ARMY  SYSTEM    39 

Germany.  Lord  Haldane's  reorganisation  of  the 
army  was  to  a  great  extent  thus  inspired.  The 
very  latest  change  made  almost  on  the  eve  of 
the  war — the  organisation  of  the  battalion  into 
four  companies  instead  of  eight — was  a  direct 
copying  of  the  German  model.  Every  army  in 
Europe  has,  in  fact,  based  much  of  its  progress 
in  the  last  forty  years  on  German  teaching  and 
experience,  and  even  the  army  of  Japan  was 
reorganised  by  German  officers  on  the  methods 
which  had  secured  success  for  the  German  arms 
in  the  wars  of  nearly  half  a  century  ago. 


CHAPTER  III 
ARMY  ORGANISATION 

THE    ARMY    CORPS    AND    THE    CAVALRY    DIVISION 

IN  describing  the  organisation  of  the  German 
army  it  will  be  simpler  to  begin  with  the 
larger  units — the  Army  Corps  and  the  Cavalry 
Division. 

The  Army  Corps  is  a  combined  force  of  in- 
fantry, cavalry  and  artillery,  with  their  auxiliary 
services,  but  mainly  an  infantry  and  artillery 
force.  The  cavalry  attached  to  it  is  a  relatively 
small  detachment,  intended  to  supply  escorts  and 
orderlies,  and  the  few  mounted  troops  to  be  used 
in  advanced  guard  and  outpost  work.  The  cavalry 
division  is  a  mounted  force  with  several  horse 
artillery  batteries,  and  these  mounted  divisions  are 
used  for  the  great  cavalry  screen  that  covers  the 
movements  of  an  army,  explores  the  country  to 
its  front,  carries  out  reconnaissances,  and  on  the 
battlefield  co-operates  in  the  attack,  or  uses  its 
more  rapid  marching  power  to  carry  out  the 
great  flank  movements. 

A  German  army  corps  is  usually  formed 
of  two  infantry  divisions.  In  each  division 
there  are  two  infantry  brigades,  each  formed 


ARMY  ORGANISATION  41 

of  two  regiments  of  three  battalions  each.  To 
one  of  the  divisions  there  is  usually  attached  a 
J«ger,  or  rifle,  battalion.  The  men  of  these 
rifle  battalions  are  specially  selected  among 
recruits  from  forest  and  hill  districts — men  who 
are  used  to  an  open-air  life.  In  all  the  army 
corps  has  thus  twenty-five  battalions  of  infantry. 

To  each  of  the  divisions  there  is  attached  a 
regiment  of  cavalry  and  a  brigade  of  field  artil- 
lery. In  our  army  a  brigade  of  field  artillery 
is  a  colonel's  command,  made  up  of  three  bat- 
teries (eighteen  guns).  The  German  field 
artillery  brigade  is  a  major-general's  command, 
and  is  made  up  of  two  artillery  regiments, 
each  of  six  batteries.  Thus  each  division  has 
seventy-two  guns.  In  one  of  the  divisions  three 
of  these  batteries  have  light  field  howitzers  for 
the  shelling  of  entrenchments  instead  of  field- 
pieces.  Most  of  the  army  corps  have  further  a 
heavy  artillery  battalion,  which  brings  into  the 
field  four  batteries  of  heavy  howitzers  on  travel- 
ling carriages. 

Each  division  has,  besides  a  company  of 
pioneers  (engineers),  a  bridge  train  and  am- 
munition columns.  To  the  army  corps  are 
attached  from  one  to  four  engineer  companies,  a 
heavy  bridge  train,  a  telegraph  detachment,  a 
balloon  and  aeroplane  detachment,  ammunition 
columns  for  infantry  and  artillery,  ambulances, 
supply  columns,  including  field-bakery  columns. 

A  large  part  of  this  transport  is  now  motor 
driven,  and  in  the  German  army  corps  this 
motor  transport  is  used  to  enable  the  auxiliary 
services  to  get  through  a  large  amount  of  work 


42        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

on  the  actual  line  of  march.  Thus  there  are 
motor  waggons  fitted  as  travelling  kitchens. 
Others  in  which  tailors  and  cobblers  are  at 
work  repairing  the  men's  clothes  and  boots,  and 
a  travelling  printing  office,  which  sets  up  and 
prints  off  orders,  circulars  containing  informa- 
tion, and  in  one  of  the  army  corps  of  each  group 
of  corps  working  together  as  an  '  army,"  a 
little  daily  paper  for  distribution  to  the  men. 

In  war  time  an  army  corps  may  be  strengthened 
by  the  addition  of  a  third  division  formed  of 
Reservists  and  Landwehr  troops.  This  would 
make  the  fighting  strength  of  the  corps  about 
50,000  men.  The  normal  army  corps  of  two 
divisions  brings  about  40,000  men  and  officers 
into  the  field.  But  of  these  some  6,000  are  non- 
combatants — transport,  ambulances,  and  other 
auxiliary  services  requiring  this  large  personnel. 
The  transport,  ammunition  columns,  ambulances, 
etc.  used  to  require  nearly  10,000  horses,  but 
these  have  been  in  the  present  war  largely 
replaced  by  motors. 

The  Cavalry  Division  is  a  mounted  force  of 
about  4,500  officers  and  men,  of  whom  some 
500  are  non-combatants.  It  is  made  up  of  three 
brigades  of  cavalry,  each  of  two  regiments,  two 
batteries  of  horse  artillery,  a  detachment  of 
pioneers,  a  telegraph  detachment,  ambulances, 
transport  and  ammunition  columns.  In  the 
present  war  all  transport  attached  to  the 
cavalry  division  is  made  up  of  motor  vehicles, 
and  motor  cars  are  also  used  to  strengthen  the 
cavalry  with  detachments  of  riflemen  conveyed 
by  motor  and  cars  armed  with  machine  guns  and 


ARMY  ORGANISATION  43 

light  quick-firers.  To  both  the  infantry  and 
cavalry  divisions  there  are  also  attached  a  number 
of  anti-aeroplane  guns  mounted  on  motor  cars. 
The  gun  and  its  mounting  both  come  from 
Krupp's  factory.  The  car  has  a  couple  of  spades 
or  anchors  attached  to  it,  which  can  be  screwed 
down  into  the  ground,  and  the  gun  is  mounted 
on  an  upright  pivot,  so  that  it  can  be  placed  at 
a  high  angle  of  elevation.  It  is  mounted  some- 
thing like  a  big  telescope  on  its  tripod.  It  is  a 
light  quick-firer  throwing  shells  of  about  three 
pounds.  Some  of  the  shells  have  besides  their 
bursting  charge  a  charge  in  the  base  of  a  smoke- 
producing  substance,  so  that  even  in  bright 
sunlight  they  leave  a  trail  behind  them  which 
enables  the  gunner  to  watch  their  flight.  The 
gun  is  thus  to  some  extent  made  to  act  as  its 
own  range-finder. 

On  mobilisation  for  war  a  number  of  army 
corps  and  one  or  two  cavalry  divisions  are 
grouped  together  to  form  one  of  the  subordinate 
armies  for  active  operations  in  the  field.  It  is 
fairly  easy  to  judge  what  the  composition  of 
these  armies  on  various  parts  of  the  frontier 
will  be,  so  far  as  the  permanently  organised 
territorial  army  corps  are  concerned.  The 
position  of  their  district  in  relation  to  the  railway 
system  of  the  country  largely  determines  this. 
The  puzzling  problem  is  to  find  out  how  many 
of  these  corps  have  been  strengthened  with  a 
third  division  and  how  many  reserve  corps  have 
been  formed,  and  to  which  armies  they  are 
attached.  These  reserve  corps  are,  to  use  a 
familiar  phrase,  the  cards  that  the  chief  of  the 


44        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

general  staff  keeps  up  his  sleeve,  and  the  puzzle 
is  further  increased  by  the  fact  that  the  reserve 
corps  thus  formed  often  receive  the  same  numbers 
as  the  permanent  corps  of  their  district.  This 
is  probably  why  during  the  present  war  we 
often  hear  of  corps  bearing  the  same  number 
being  reported  as  in  action  at  far  distant  parts 
of  the  great  battle  line. 

Infantry 

A  German  infantry  regiment  has  almost  the 
strength  of  a  British  brigade.  It  is  formed  of 
three  battalions,  each  of  four  companies  and  the 
company  is  divided  into  three  sections,  or,  as 
they  are  called  in  the  German  army,  Zugs.  The 
strength  of  the  company  on  a  war  footing  is 
250  men.  During  recent  years  the  infantry 
battalions  in  all  the  frontier  districts  towards 
France  and  Russia  have  been  kept  at  a  peace 
strength  of  180.  The  battalions  in  the  other 
corps  had  a  company  peace  strength  of  160. 
Thus  on  mobilisation  each  company  in  the 
frontier  corps  required  only  70  reservists  to 
bring  it  up  to  war  strength.  Those  of  the  other 
corps  would  require  90.  But  in  the  whole 
first  line  army  on  mobilisation  more  than  two- 
thirds  of  the  men  in  the  ranks  would  be  trained 
regulars,  the  reservists  forming  a  much  smaller 
proportion  than  in  any  other  European  army. 
When  the  German  mobilised  for  the  present 
war  none  of  the  infantry  had  less  than  ten 
months  of  training  and  more  than  half  would 
have  had  nearly  two  years'  service.  This  small 


ARMY  ORGANISATION  45 

proportion  of  reservists  in  the  first  fighting  line 
tends  to  make  the  army  corps  already  formed 
remarkably  efficient,  and  leaves  a  huge  surplus 
of  men  for  the  formation  of  the  reserve  corps. 

The  battalion  with  its  four  companies  when 
mobilised  is  a  little  over  1,000  strong — 26 
officers  and  1,031  men — under  the  command 
of  a  major.  Three  battalions  united  in  the 
regiment  under  the  command  of  the  colonel 
have  a  war  strength  of  3,171  officers  and  men. 
The  brigade  of  two  regiments  under  the  com- 
mand of  a  major-general  is  about  6,400  strong. 
The  infantry  division  is  a  lieutenant-general's 
command.  It  is  formed  of  two  infantry  brigades 
and  musters  about  13,000  men. 

The  infantry  weapon  is  the  Mauser  magazine 
rifle  of  the  1898  pattern.  The  calibre  is  .311 — 
a  little  more  than  the  calibre  of  our  British 
army  rifle.  The  cartridges  are  loaded  in  clips 
carrying  five  each.  Every  regiment  has  a  con- 
siderable number  of  machine  guns  using  the 
rifle  cartridge.  In  peace  time  the  uniform  of 
infantry  of  the  line  is  dark  blue,  but  the  war 
uniform  is  of  a  greenish-grey  colour,  which  is 
said  to  melt  very  well  into  the  background  of  a 
European  landscape.  Many  think  in  this  respect 
it  is  better  than  khaki,  which  was  originally 
adopted  for  service  in  sun-baked  Indian  districts 
and  Soudan  deserts,  and  which  shows  up  rather 
too  strongly  against  a  green  background.  The 
head-dress  of  the  infantry  is  a  leather  helmet 
with  a  spike  at  the  top  of  it,  a  rather  heavier  and 
clumsier  form  of  head-gear  than  the  spiked 
helmets  we  adopted  for  our  infantry  after  the 


46        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

Franco-German  war,  as  a  kind  of  imitative 
tribute  to  the  successful  army.  The  German 
helmet  with  its  polished  black  surface  and  brass 
or  gilded  badges,  reflects  the  sun  too  strongly  for 
modern  battle  conditions,  and  in  the  present  war 
it  is  covered  with  a  piece  of  fabric  of  the  same 
colour  as  the  uniform. 

The  German  infantryman  carries  rather  a 
heavy  load  in  his  knapsack.  The  object  is  to 
lighten  to  a  corresponding  extent  the  weight 
carried  on  the  baggage  waggons  and  make  the 
men  more  independent  of  them.  The  mounted 
officers — colonels,  majors,  adjutants  and  cap- 
tains— carry  in  the  same  way  a  good  deal  of 
weight  on  their  horses  or  spare  chargers,  and 
the  officers  who  are  not  mounted  are  equipped 
with  smaller  and  rather  more  elegantly  made 
knapsacks  than  those  carried  by  the  men,  and 
thus  have  all  immediately  necessary  kit  with 
them  wherever  the  regiment  halts. 

The  infantry  drill  has  been  made  fairly  simple. 
The  company  drawn  up  with  its  three  Zugs,  or 
sections,  in  two-deep  lines,  one  behind  the  other, 
is  the  unit.  The  ordinary  assembly  formation  is 
that  of  the  four  company  columns  in  lines. 
Column  formations  are  the  ordinary  or  narrow 
column  formed  by  these  company  columns 
following  each  other  in  succession,  or  the  broad 
column,  in  which  the  battalion  is  arrayed  in  two 
columns,  each  of  two  companies  or  six  sections 
placed  side  by  side.  As  with  us,  marching  in 
fours  is  the  usual  order  for  the  column  of  route. 
Fighting  formations  are  made  by  deploying  into 
firing  lines  and  supports  from  the  line  of  company 


ARMY  ORGANISATION  47 

columns.  The  German  regulars  are  very  hard- 
worked  during  their  two  years'  service,  and  the 
precision  of  drill  is  remarkable.  Every  one  who 
has  attended .  the  manoeuvres  of  the  German 
army  is  struck  by  the  absence  of  shouting  or 
excitement  and  the  few  orders  that  are  given 
by  the  officers.  Every  one  seems  to  understand 
what  is  wanted,  and  a  signal  with  the  hand  or 
the  sword  sends  the  men  forward,  halts  them, 
or  changes  the  direction  of  the  advance. 

Talking  of  drill,  one  point  may  be  explained 
about  which  there  has  been  much  curious  mis- 
conception during  the  present  war.  In  the  old 
Prussian  drill-book  of  Frederick  the  Great's  time, 
the  infantry  march  was  a  slow  step  with  the  leg 
kept  stiff.  This  curious  stiff-legged  march  is 
still  practised  in  the  German  army,  and  is  used 
at  times  at  reviews.  It  is  a  survival  just  like 
the  slow  march  which  is  used  by  our  brigade  of 
Guards  every  year  at  the  trooping  of  the  colours 
on  the  King's  birthday.  This  slow  step  was  the 
ordinary  marching  pace  of  all  our  army  until 
about  eighty  years  ago,  when  the  quick  march 
was  introduced.  At  Berlin  and  Potsdam,  on 
great  occasions,  the  Prussian  Guards  not  only 
march  past  with  the  old-fashioned  stiff-legged 
"  Parade  step,"  but  also  wear  the  quaint  mitre- 
shaped  head-gear  of  the  eighteenth  century 
Grenadiers.  The  "  Parade  step  '  has  been  very 
absurdly  described  as  the  "  Goose-step,"  an 
exercise  which  long  survived  in  our  own  drill- 
book,  and  consisted  of  a  •  slow-marking  time, 
bending  the  knee  and  raising  the  foot  high. 
One  of  the  correspondents  who  described  the 


48          THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

German  entry  into  Brussels  said,  "  The  troops 
marched  in  with  the  goose-step  to  show  their 
contempt  for  the  Belgians."  They  were  really 
marching  in  with  the  '  Parade  step  '  of  festive 
occasions  because  they  were  celebrating  a  great 
success. 

Cavalry 

There  are  ninety-three  regiments  of  cavalry- 
cuirassiers,  lancers,  dragoons  and  hussars.  Ever 
since  the  Franco-German  war  there  has  been  the 
fashion  to  talk  of  all  the  German  cavalry  men  as 
Uhlans,  the  name  properly  belongs  only  to  the 
lancer  regiments.  Lances  were  first  introduced 
into  the  modern  European  armies  in  imitation 
of  Napoleon's  regiments  of  Polish  lancers,  and 
the  name  ;  Uhlan  '  for  a  lancer  has  come  into 
use  in  Germany  from  a  Polish  word  itself  derived 
from  the  Turkish*.  All  the  heavy  cavalry  regi- 
ments in  the  German  army  have  the  front  rank 
armed  with  a  lance — a  weapon  with  a  long  shaft 
formed  of  a  light  steel  tube,  and  carrying  in 
peace  time  a  small  pennon  of  the  colours  of 
whatever  State  the  regiment  may  belong  to. 
The  other  cavalry  weapons  are  the  sword,  and  a 
Mauser  carbine.  And  a  considerable  amount 
of  time  is  given  to  dismounted  drill  and  practice 
of  the  carbine  fighting  in  open  order.  To  every 
regiment  a  group  of  cyclists  is  attached  for 
orderly  and  messenger  duties. 

There  are  five  squadrons  in  a  cavalry  regiment. 

*  There   were   no   lancer   regiments  in  our  own  army  until 
1816 — the  year  after  Waterloo. 


ARMY  ORGANISATION  49 

In  war  time  one  of  these  squadrons  is  left  behind 
at  the  depot  to  train  reservists  and  recruits 
and  supply  drafts  to  make  up  for  losses.  The 
other  four  squadrons  take  the  field.  In  each 
squadron  there  are  four  troops,  each  of  one 
officer  and  forty  men.  The  war  strength  is  about 
670  officers  and  men.  In  peace  time  there  are 
generally  four  regiments  of  cavalry  in  each 
army  corps  district.  On  mobilisation  one  of 
these  is  attached  to  the  army  coips,  and  the 
three  others  go  to  join  one  of  the  cavalry  divisions. 

Artillery 

The  field  artillery  is  organised  in  regiments, 
each  of  six  batteries  or  thirty-six  guns.  In 
each  regiment  there  are  about  700  officers 
and  men.  The  field  gun  is  of  the  1896  pattern, 
with  a  quick-firing  mounting  adopted  since  that 
date.  It  throws  a  15-pound  shell.  An  army 
corps  has  twelve  batteries  attached  to  each  of 
its  two  divisions — twenty-one  of  these  batteries 
are  made  up  of  field  guns — the  other  three 
batteries  are  made  up  of  what  are  known  as  light 
field  howitzers.  The  howitzer  is  a  gun  shorter 
in  length  and  wider  in  bore  than  the  field  piece. 
While  the  former  is  intended  for  direct  fire 
against  an  enemy's  position,  the  latter  is  intended 
to  throw  a  heavier  shell  on  a  high-curved  flight, 
so  as  to  send  down  a  shower  of  shrapnel  balls 
on  troops  sheltered  by  entrenchments  or  under 
cover.  The  howitzers  are  also  used  for  dropping 
into  an  enemy's  works  shells  loaded  with  a  high 
explosive  and  bursting  by  percussion  on  reaching 
D 


50        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

the  ground.  These  shells  are  meant  to  destroy 
or  demoralize  hostile  troops  by  the  shock  of  the 
explosion,  and  to  shatter  buildings  or  obstacles 
held  by  the  enemy.  The  high  angle  fire  of  the 
howitzer  is  also  useful  for  shelling  an  enemy 
from  guns  kept  completely  out  of  sight  behind 
a  swell  of  the  ground,  walls  and  banks,  or  other 
obstacles.  Artillery  of  all  kinds  now  tries  to 
conceal  its  position,  either  by  digging  itself  into 
gun  pits,  using  natural  cover,  or  heaping  up 
round  the  guns  anything  that  will  make  it  diffi- 
cult to  identify  them  from  a  distance.  But  though 
there  is  no  longer  the  dense  cloud  of  smoke  which 
used  to  mark  the  position  of  a  battery  in  action, 
the  long  bright  flashes  of  a  smokeless  powder 
generally  soon  show  where  field  guns  are  firing. 
It  is  true  that  these  can  be  used  from  behind 
an  obstacle  to  fire  at  a  target  the  gunners  cannot 
see,  the  elevation  and  direction  being  given  by 
an  observer  at  some  distance  by  signal  or  tele- 
phone. But  the  range  of  elevation  in  the  field 
gun  is  very  limited,  and  it  is  much  easier  to 
employ  the  howitzer  in  this  way. 

The  field  howitzers  of  the  German  army  are 
— like  the  field  guns — fitted  with  hydraulic 
brakes  and  steel  shields.  The  light  howitzer 
throws  a  30-pound  shell.  To  each  army  corps 
there  are  attached  four  batteries  of  a  much  more 
formidable  weapon — the  heavy  field  howitzer- 
this  throws  a  shell  weighing  94  pounds,  and  is 
generally  used  with  charges  of  high  explosives 
and  percussion  fuses  that  burst  the  shell  on  con- 
tact. These  are  the  big  shells  that  our  soldiers 
describe  as  "  Black  Marias,"  "  Coal-boxes,"  and 


ARMY  ORGANISATION  51 

"  Jack  Johnsons."  During  the  present  war  they 
have  been  the  most  formidable  and  effective 
weapons  on  the  German  side. 

All  these  guns  can  be  moved  on  field  carriages, 
even  over  rough  ground,  and  brought  into  action 
without  platforms.  Much  heavier  artillery  is 
used  in  the  siege  trains  for  the  attack  of  fortresses. 
It  seems  that  some  of  these  heavy  guns  have 
been  brought  into  action  on  entrenched  positions 
during  the  war,  but  this  is  an  exceptional  use 
for  them.  Until  the  attack  on  the  Belgian 
fortresses  revealed  the  fact  that  the  Germans 
possessed  a  much  heavier  weapon,  it  was  supposed 
that  the  heaviest  guns  in  their  siege  trains  were 
the  28-centimetre  (n-inch)  siege  howitzers. 
These  are  mounted  on  carriages  with  broad 
wheels  on  what  is  known  as  the  "  pedrail  "  system, 
originally  an  English  invention  for  enabling  a 
traction  engine  to  work  over  soft  or  broken 
ground.  The  wheel  runs  inside  an  endless  chain 
of  wide  plates  which  in  succession  bear  its  weight 
and  act  as  a  kind  of  moving  tramway.  Before 
the  war,  military  writers  in  Germany  had  urged 
the  necessity  of  providing  a  much  heavier  gun 
for  the  attack  of  modern  forts  defended  by  steel 
armour  and  masses  of  concrete.  But  it  was  not 
until  the  attack  on  Liege  that  anyone  outside 
the  inner  circle  of  the  German  army  knew  the 
gun  had  been  provided.  It  is  officially  known 
as  the  42-centimetre  siege  howitzer.  The  gun 
and  its  mounting  are  so  designed  that  they  can 
be  taken  to  pieces  and  carried  on  separate 
carriages.  Four  traction  engines  or  thirty-two 
horses  are  required  for  the  transport  of  a  single 


52       THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

gun.  The  bore  is  in  English  measurement  about 
i6J  inches,  and  the  shell  weighs  approximately 
a  ton.  Loaded  with  a  powerful  high  explosive 
it  is  practically  a  flying  mine.  Some  of  the  forts 
at  Liege  and  Namur  were  wrecked  by  four  or 
five  well-placed  shots,  and  the  garrisons  were 
made  temporarily  helpless  by  the  gases  produced 
by  the  explosion  and  driven  into  the  casements 
and  turrets.  There  are  very  few  of  these  guns 
with  the  German  army,  some  say  not  more  than 
eight  in  all,  and  the  greater  part  of  the  bombard- 
ment of  the  Liege  and  Namur  forts,  and  probably 
the  whole  of  the  bombardment  at  Antwerp,  was 
the  work  of  the  lighter  n-inch  howitzers. 

These  guns  are  formidable  enough,  and  much 
handier  than  the  newer  i6J-inch  giants.  The 
1 1 -inch  howitzer  has  a  range  of  nearly  11,000 
yards  (over  six  miles)  and  throws  a  76o-pound 
shell. 

Another  peculiar  gun,  described  in  German 
official  publications  before  the  war,  is  intended 
to  throw  heavy  spherical  bombs  on  a  high 
curved  flight  at  moderate  ranges.  It  has  been 
lately  used  in  the  trench  fighting  in  Belgium.  The 
principle  is  the  same  as  that  which  has  been  intro- 
duced by  an  English  inventor  for  throwing  large 
grenades  from  an  ordinary  rifle.  The  bomb, 
which  is  four  or  five  times  the  diameter  of  the 
bore  of  the  gun,  has  a  kind  of  stem  attached  to 
it  which  fits  into  the  cannon  and  is  in  contact 
with  the  driving  charge.  When  the  gun  is 
loaded  the  big  round  shell  is  just  outside  its 
muzzle,  looking  like  a  bubble  blown  from  a 
pipe.  On  firing  the  gun  the  long  stem  drives 


ARMY  ORGANISATION  53 

the  bomb  forward  on  its  curved  flight.  But 
the  range  is  short  and  the  whole  device  is  intended 
for  bringing  a  heavy  shell  fire  at  close  quarters 
to  bear  upon  troops  defending  themselves  in 
buildings  or  behind  obstacles. 

Another  gun  of  peculiar  construction,  which 
has  been  very  largely  employed  with  the  German 
army,  is  the  Krupp  anti-aeroplane  quick-firer 
already  described. 

Engineers  and  Auxiliary  Services 

The  engineers — known  in  the  German  army  as 
pioneers — are  organised  in  battalions  and  com- 
panies, and  there  are  special  companies  for 
bridging  work  and  telegraphy,  now  including 
wireless.  A  kind  of  steam  plough  is  used  for 
rapidly  marking  out  and  partly  digging  entrench- 
ments, W7hich  are  afterwards  completed  by  hand- 
work. There  are  special  companies  for  railway 
work,  and  besides  this  the  infantry  regiments 
are  practised  in  the  rapid  demolition  and  relaying 
of  railway  lines. 

There  are  a  large  number  of  specialised  auxiliary 
services.  Ambulances  and  transport  and  ammuni- 
tion columns  are  attached  to  every  division,  and 
each  army  corps  has  detachments  of  Field 
Gendarmes  for  military  police  duties,  and 
despatch  riders  for  conveying  orders  and  in- 
formation. Within  the  last  few  years  an  elaborate 
aviation  service  has  been  organised.  It  is  divided 
into  two  branches — the  airship  battalions  and  the 
aeroplane  battalions.  The  former  are  trained  to 
repair  and  handle  airships  of  the  various  types 


54        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

used  in  the  German  army — the  rigid  Zeppelins, 
the  semi-rigid  Gross  type,  and  the  non-rigid 
Parseval — and  at  each  centre  there  are  large 
sheds  for  housing  the  airships.  According  to 
the  latest  scheme  of  organisation  the  five  battalions 
for  dirigible  work  were  arranged  as  follows  : 

1st  Battalion  (Berlin),  Central  training  school 
and  general  reserve  of  men  and  material. 

2nd  Battalion  (Berlin,  Hanover,  and  Dresden), 
intended  for  operations  against  Russia  on  the 
vSilesian  frontier. 

3rd  Battalion  (Cologne,  Dusseldorf,  and  Darm- 
stadt), intended  for  operations  on  the  Belgian 
and  French  frontier. 

4th  Battalion  (Mannheim,  Metz,  Lahr,  and 
Friedrichshafen),  intended  for  operations  against 
France. 

5th  Battalion  (Konigsberg,  Graudenz,  Scheide- 
miihl,  and  Allenstein),  intended  for  operations 
against  Russia,  on  the  northern  part  of  the 
frontier. 

The  aeroplanes  are  organised  in  four  battalions 
as  follows  : 

ist  Battalion  (Doberitz,  near  Berlin,  and 
Zaltheim). 

2nd  Battalion  (Posen,  Graudenz,  and  Konigs- 
berg). 

3rd  Battalion  (Cologne,  Hanover,  and 
Darmstadt). 

4th  Battalion  (Strasburg,  Metz,  and  Freiburg). 

Like  our  own  aviation  service,  the  organisation 
is  at  the  beginning  of  its  development,  and  the 
number  of  battalions  in  its  two  branches  has  been 
fixed  rather  on  the  scale  of  what  is  ultimately 


ARMY    ORGANISATION  55 

intended  than  what  has  been  actually  accom- 
plished. Taking  the  number  of  officers  and 
men  into  account,  they  might  better  be  described 
as  companies.  There  has  certainly  been  much 
exaggeration  in  current  estimates  of  the  number 
of  airships  now  available. 


CHAPTER  IV 
PREPARATION  FOR  WAR 

THE     WORK     OF     THE     GENERAL     STAFF 

TjNDER  modern  conditions  it  is  more  than  ever 
true  that  the  issue  of  a  war  is  to  a  great 
extent  decided  by  the  work  done  during  the  years 
of  peace.  In  earlier  days — for  instance  in  the 
period  before  the  great  French  Revolution — this 
was  recognised  only  to  the  extent  that  a  certain 
number  of  men  were  drilled  and  equipped  in 
peace  time,  and  a  certain  amount  of  arms  and 
ammunition  kept  in  store.  The  main  work  of 
preparation  was  done  when  war  became  imminent 
or  had  actually  been  declared.  Even  during 
the  Napoleonic  wars  and  far  into  the  Nineteenth 
Century  most  of  the  European  nations  proceeded 
in  this  way.  It  was  thought  that  when  war 
came  there  would  be  time  enough  to  raise  new 
regiments,  prepare  plans  of  campaign  and  get 
together  the  necessary  material. 

It  was  the  chiefs  of  the  Prussian  army  who 
first  recognised  that  the  preparation  for  war 
must  be  given  a  wider  scope  and  carried  on 
continuously  during  the  years  of  peace.  By 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  37 

law  and  tradition  the  king  was  the  commander 
of  the  army,  not  in  any  merely  honorary  sense, 
but  in  actual  fact.  The  war  ministry  had  to  do 
with  the  providing  of  the  necessary  funds  and 
their  expenditure  and  all  the  business  routine 
connected  with  recruiting,  clothing,  equipping 
and  lodging  the  men,  purchasing  stores,  and 
generally  carrying  out  the  administrative  work 
of  the  army.  It  acted  in  all  these  matters  on 
the  advice  of  the  group  of  experts  who  formed 
the  permanent  staff  of  the  king.  The  chief  of 
this  staff  was  the  executive  head  of  the  army. 

Von  Moltke  was  appointed  to  the  General  Staff 
of  the  army  in  1832,  and  after  three  years  of 
its  work  in  its  office  in  Berlin  he  was  sent  on  a 
mission  to  Turkey,  where  he  assisted  the  Sultan, 
Mahmoud,  as  military  adviser,  and  took  an 
active  part  in  the  campaign  against  the  Egyptian 
army  in  Asia.  He  returned  to  his  staff  duties 
in  Berlin  in  1839,  and  in  1857  he  became  chief 
of  the  General  Staff,  a  post  which  he  held  for 
thirty  years.* 

He  had  thus  reached  the  highest  position  in 
the  army  just  in  time  to  co-operate  with  King 
William  and  the  War  Minister,  Von  Roon,  in 
the  great  reorganisation  of  the  Prussian  army, 
which  prepared  it  for  the  victories  of  1864,  1866 
and  1870.  The  General  Staff  itself  was  re- 
organised, and  the  scope  of  its  activities  extended 

*  Moltke's  predecessors  were — Scharnhorst,  the  founder  of 
the  system,  till  his  death  in  1813  ;  Gneisenau,  1813-1821  ; 
Von  Muffling  (who  had  been  the  Prussian  attache  with 
Wellington's  headquarters  at  Waterloo),  1821-1829  ;  Von 
Krauseneck,  1829-1848  ;  and  Von  Reyher,  1848-1857. 


58        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

year  after  year.  It  was  made  up  of  officers 
selected  from  the  general  list  of  the  army,  in- 
cluding a  considerable  number  of  young  men 
who,  while  occupying  subordinate  positions  in 
the  offices  of  Berlin,  were  trained  for  staff  work 
in  the  field.  Under  Von  Moltke,  the  General 
Staff  became,  to  use  an  apt  expression  of  Mr. 
Spencer- Wilkinson,  "  the  brain  of  the  Prussian 
army/' 

What  gave  all  its  work  a  definite  character 
was  that  it  was  not  merely  an  organisation  for 
supervising  the  peace  training  of  the  troops,  but 
year  after  year  it  was  working  out  all  the  details 
for  their  employment,  not  with  a  general  view 
to  some  vaguely  possible  war,  but  with  the  definite 
purpose  of  using  them  in  this  or  that  probable 
campaign.  Thus,  at  the  very  outset,  Moltke 
drew  up  plans  for  operations  against  each  and 
all  of  the  neighbouring  states.  Naturally,  the 
most  probable  enemies  were  first  taken  into 
consideration.  Thus  in  1859,  while  France  was 
engaged  in  war  with  Austria,  and  there  was  a 
prospect  of  Prussian  intervention,  Moltke  com- 
pleted a  plan  for  a  war  against  France  on  the 
Rhine  frontier.  Like  all  his  plans,  extreme 
simplicity  was  the  basis  of  it.  He  laid  down 
more  than  once,  in  his  reports  from  the  General 
Staff,  the  principle  that  it  wras  useless  to  attempt 
the  full  development  of  any  future  war.  The 
most  that  could  be  done  would  be  to  define  the 
general  object  of  the  operations,  and  to  arrange  to 
place  the  armies  on  the  frontier,  and  start  them 
on  their  march  across  it.  In  the  plan  against 
France  in  1859,  he  simply  stated  that  his  object 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  59 

was  to  place  as  large  a  mass  as  possible  on  the 
western  frontier,  cross  it,  and  endeavour  to 
bring  the  French  to  action  as  soon  as  possible. 
After  the  first  battle  further  plans  would  be 
arranged  according  to  circumstances. 

The  plans  of  campaign  drawn  up  by  the 
General  Staff  were,  therefore,  essentially  plans 
for  the  mobilisation  and  concentration  of  the 
army  on  this  or  that  frontier.  The  activity  of 
the  General  Staff  was,  accordingly,  directed  first 
to  working  out  the  details  of  mobilisation, 
and  gradually  accelerating  the  operations. 
Secondly,  with  a  view  to  this  and  to  the  sub- 
sequent concentration  of  the  army,  it  kept  a 
continual  control  of  the  railway  system.  The 
development  of  the  Prussian,  and  subsequently 
of  the  German  railway  system,  was  throughout 
directed  to  military  necessities,  instead  of,  as 
in  most  other  countries,  being  a  kind  of  hap- 
hazard growth,  resulting  from  industrial  needs 
and  commercial  enterprise.  Thanks  to  this 
military  direction,  Germany  possesses  at  the 
present  moment  a  series  of  great  trunk  lines 
running  east  and  west,  and  on  the  Russian  and 
the  French  frontiers  a  network  of  railways, 
which  would  never  have  been  constructed  if 
account  had  been  taken  only  of  the  industrial 
needs  of  the  country. 

After  the  annexation  of  Alsace-Lorraine  in 
1871,  the  General  Staff  drew  up  a  complete  plan 
for  the  railways  of  the  new  frontier,  and  this 
was  later  extended  into  Luxemburg  by  German 
railway  companies  with  state  help  obtaining 
concessions  for  lines  through  the  Grand  Duchy, 


60       THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

linking  the  German  with  the  French  and  Belgian 
systems.  In  the  same  way,  on  the  Russian 
frontier,  the  lines  running  from  the  westward 
towards  Poland  and  into  Pomerania  and  East 
Prussia  were  linked  together  by  three  separate 
railway  tracks  following  the  frontier  in  a  great 
curve  connected  by  frequent  cross-lines,  and 
having  along  the  frontier  numerous  large  stations 
with  extensive  sidings.  This  system  was  carried 
through  Silesia  into  the  Austrian  province  of 
Galicia.  In  1900  General  Kuropatkin,  who 
was  then  Minister  of  War,  drew  up  a  report  on 
the  defence  of  Russian  Poland,  which  was 
subsequently  published  in  the  book  he  wrote 
after  the  Russo-Japanese  war  in  defence  of  his 
policy.  In  this  report  Kuropatkin  spoke  of  the 
railway  system  of  the  Austro-German  frontier 
as  "  the  most  formidable  factor  on  the  side  of 
Russia's  opponents  in  a  war  with  the  Triple 
Alliance." 

To  us  in  England,  a  third  feature  of  this 
military  railway  system  in  Germany  is  of  special 
interest.  The  North  Sea  coast,  between  the 
mouths  of  the  Ems  and  the  Elbe,  is  a  region  of 
small  fishing  villages  among  the  sandhills  with 
behind  them  a  dreary  expanse  of  marsh  and 
moorland.  All  the  needs  of  the  district  would 
be  more  than  met  by  a  single-line  railway  with 
a  few  small  stations.  It  has  one  of  the  finest 
double  track  railways  in  Germany  following  the 
general  line  of  the  coast,  with  large  stations 
equipped  with  long  platforms  and  numerous 
sidings  and  great  sheds  for  stores.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  it  is  essentially  a  military  railway, 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  61 

not  only  linking  all  the  ports  of  the  seaboard, 
but  also  supplying  facilities  for  the  detraining 
and  embarkation  of  troops  in  every  creek  and 
backwater  along  the  Frisian  coast. 

We  have  now  learned  from  Germany  the  art 
of  using  railways  to  their  fullest  extent  during 
the  mobilisation  and  concentration  period  of  a 
great  war.  But  it  was  Moltke  and  the  General 
Staff  of  Berlin  that  first  elaborated  such  a 
system.  It  was  already  perfect  before  the  war 
of  1870.  The  railway  department  of  the  General 
Staff  had  worked  out  time-tables  for  the  move- 
ment of  troops  and  the  necessary  train  loads  of 
stores  to  every  frontier  of  Germany.  With  its 
mobilisation  orders  every  unit  received  the 
time-table  of  the  trains  that  would  convey  it  to 
the  point  where  it  was  to  detrain  on  the  frontier. 
These  time-tables  are  revised  from  year  to  year. 
On  the  "  declaration  of  the  state  of  war/'  which 
is  the  immediate  prelude  to  mobilisation,  the 
railways  pass  automatically  under  military  con- 
trol. The  time-tables  for  the  movement  of 
trains  are  already  in  the  possession  of  the  direc- 
tors of  each  section  of  the  lines,  and  on  the 
announcement  of  the  mobilisation  the  movement 
of  the  trains  begins  at  once.  We  now  regard 
all  this  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  before  1870 
the  only  War  Office  in  Europe  that  thought  it 
worth  while  to  prepare  railway  time-tables  for 
war  during  the  years  of  peace  was  the  War 
Office  at  Berlin. 

The  plan  of  campaign  is  thus  in  its  first  stage 
chiefly  a  railway  plan,  but  the  preparation  of 
all  this  mass  of  detailed  orders  and  tables  is 


62        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

only  one  part  of  the  work  of  the  General  Staff. 
Moltke  made  the  annual  manoeuvres  not  merely 
a  means  of  training  the  higher  commanders  in 
handling  masses  of  troops,  but  also  an  exercise 
in  the  use  of  the  railways  for  concentration  and, 
to  a  certain  extent,  an  experimental  test  of  one 
or  other  of  the  plans  of  campaign  he  kept  in  his 
portfolios.  This  testing  of  future  plans  was 
carried  out  to  a  much  greater  extent  in  a  series 
of  annual  exercises,  which  had  not  the  publicity 
of  the  manoeuvres.  These  were  what  are  now 
known  in  our  own  army  as  Staff  rides.  They 
were  invented  and  practised  by  the  Berlin 
General  Staff  long  before  any  other  army  had 
even  thought  of  such  proceedings.  In  Prussia 
the  Staff  rides  were  known  as  the  exercises  of 
the  General  Staff.  Each  year  the  operations  of 
an  imaginary  campaign  on  this  or  that  frontier 
were  studied  by  a  group  of  officers  under  the 
personal  direction  of  Von  Moltke.  No  troops 
were  brought  out,  but  all  the  orders  were  worked 
out  as  if  they  were  actually  on  the  ground. 
Moltke  set  the  general  idea  and  the  problems  to 
be  solved,  and  gave  from  day  to  day  the  situation 
and  operations  of  the  imaginary  enemy.  This 
was  a  most  valuable  supplement  to  the  work 
done  in  studying  possible  campaigns  merely  on 
the  map — a  process  which  is  now  familiar  to  all 
armies  under  the  rather  misleading  name  of 
"  The  war  game/1  It  is  better  described  by 
the  name  used  in  the  Italian  army,  "  Manovre 
sulla  carta  " — "  manoeuvres  on  the  map." 

The  most  valuable  result  of  all  this  activity 
was  that  the  higher  commanders  of  the  army  and 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  63 

their  staff  officers  had  a  common  doctrine  of 
war,  had  the  same  ideas  as  to  how  troops  were 
to  be  handled  and  orders  drafted,  and  would 
therefore  not  only  interpret  in  the  same  spirit 
the  directions  received  from  the  General  Staff, 
but  also  understand  how  to  work  together. 
Much  of  the  success  of  the  German  army  in  1870 
was  due  to  this  easy  co-operation  of  the  army 
corps  commanders,  and  the  habit  acquired  of 
swiftly  and  surely  interpreting  the  brief  orders 
conveyed  from  the  general  headquarters  and 
practically  applying  them  to  the  changing  aspects 
of  the  situation. 

A  necessary  basis  for  any  plan  of  campaign 
is  a  knowledge  of  the  ground  and  of  the  enemy's 
forces,  armament  and  war  methods.  A  large 
part  of  the  work  of  the  General  Staff  always  has 
been  the  collecting  and  classifying  of  information 
on  these  matters.  Of  course  a  considerable 
amount  of  this  information  is  very  easily  secured, 
provided  there  is  a  systematic  organisation  for 
collecting  it.  And  once  more,  this  is  a  matter 
in  which  the  General  Staff  at  Berlin  were  the 
pioneers,  their  methods  being  now  largely 
adopted  by  all  other  countries.  But  before  1870, 
outside  Germany,  this  systematic  collection  of 
information  hardly  existed.  In  some  countries 
there  was  a  reckless  carelessness  on  the  subject, 
the  idea  apparently  being  that  when  war  came 
an  effort  would  be  made  to  supply  for  all  the 
deficiencies  in  the  time  of  peace.  In  France, 
under  Napoleon  III.,  the  negligence  of  the  War 
Office  in  this  respect  is  almost  incredible.  A 
very  able  officer,  Colonel  Stoffel  of  the  French 


64        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

engineers,  was  military  attache  at  the  French 
embassy  at  Berlin  from  1867  up  to  the  declaration 
of  war.  He  sent  to  Paris  voluminous  reports 
on  the  organisation,  arms  and  manoeuvres  of 
the  Prussian  army.  After  the  fall  of  the  empire 
in  September,  1870,  most  of  these  reports  were 
found  tied  up  together  in  a  portfolio  at  the  War 
Office,  many  of  them  absolutely  unopened. 
Colonel  Stoffel  had  been  accused  of  leaving  his 
government  completely  in  the  dark  as  to  the 
military  strength  of  Prussia  and  Germany,  and 
after  the  war  in  self-defence  he  published  a 
volume  of  his  Berlin  reports,  which  form  a  most 
interesting  study  of  the  Prussian  army  in  the 
years  of  preparation  for  the  Franco-German  war. 
It  need  hardly  be  said  that  there  was  no  such 
culpable  negligence  in  the  offices  of  the  General 
Staff  at  Berlin,  which  had  already  been  carrying 
on  for  years  the  same  careful  collecting  and 
co-ordinating  of  information  which  is  now  carried 
out  by  the  Intelligence  Department  of  every 
War  Office  in  the  world.  Part  of  this  work  has 
nothing  to  do  with  espionage  or  any  other  under- 
hand methods.  As  a  matter  of  fact  there  are 
not  many  secrets  to  be  discovered  by  the  agents 
of  an  Intelligence  Department,  and  there  are 
abundant  sources  of  information  open  to  anyone 
who  takes  the  trouble  to  watch  for  and  make  use 
of  them. 

First  of  all,  every  War  Office  has  the  reports 
of  the  military  attaches  at  foreign  courts  and 
of  the  officers  invited  to  attend  the  annual 
manoeuvres  of  other  armies.  Then  there  is 
the  information  to  be  gathered  from  official  and 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  65 

non-official  publications,  including  the  newspapers 
and  the  various  technical  magazines  and  reviews. 
Finally,  a  good  deal  of  information  is  gathered 
by  trained  observers  who  visit  foreign  countries. 
Some  of  these  may  be  classed  as  spies,  but  a 
large  number  hardly  come  under  this  denomi- 
nation in  the  unpleasant  sense  of  the  word. 
Thus,  for  instance,  the  officers  of  every  army  in 
the  world  when  travelling  through  a  foreign 
country  have  their  eyes  open  as  to  its  general 
character  from  a  military  point  of  view,  its 
fortresses,  and  the  rest.  Sometimes  an  officer 
taking  a  holiday  in  a  foreign  country  is  asked  to 
visit  this  or  that  frontier  region  and  report  upon 
it.  This  can  hardly  be  called  espionage.  The 
information  collected  is  that  about  which  there 
is  usually  very  little  concealed. 

The  average  man  who  has  had  no  military 
training  is  very  ready  to  believe  fantastic  stories 
about  the  way  in  which  the  German  General 
Staff  collects  its  information.  I  have  more  than 
once  seen  in  our  own  newspapers  stories  of  German 
officers  in  disguise  travelling  about  the  country 
and  making  maps  and  plans  of  it.  The  Intelligence 
Department  of  the  General  Staff  at  Berlin,  like 
that  of  every  other  department  of  the  same  kind 
in  the  world,  has  no  need  to  trust  to  maps  im- 
provised in  this  rough-and-ready  way.  It  can 
buy  through  any  bookseller  complete  sets  of 
the  official  ordnance  maps  of  every  civilised 
country,  and  if  it  wants  a  large  supply  of  the 
maps  of  any  particular  district  for  active  opera- 
tions it  can  multiply  them  by  the  various 
photographic  processes  in  the  same  printing 


66        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

offices  that  produced  the  official  maps  of  its  own 
country.  Take  the  case  of  France  at  the  present 
moment.  The  German  armies  are  simply  using 
copies*  or  originals  of  the  French  Staff  map, 
and  if  it  wants  details  as  to  the  character  of  the 
various  roads  for  wheel  traffic,  it  has  all  it  wants 
ready  made  for  it  in  the  admirable  maps  produced 
for  motorists  by  various  French  firms.  As  to 
the  permanent  fortifications,  the  French  Staff 
map  gives  the  position  of  every  fort,  battery 
and  redoubt  in  the  country.  In  our  ordnance 
maps  of  the  later  issues  these  are  omitted.  On 
the  map  of  the  Dover  district  there  is  a  blank,  not 
only  where  the  citadel  stands,  but  also  on  the 
site  of  Dover  castle.  But  this  omission  conceals 
nothing.  Everyone  knows  where  both  these 
places  are. 

As  to  the  condition  of  the  fortresses,  the 
German  Staff  doubtless  knew  before  the  war 
that  most  of  the  French  forts  outside  the  eastern 
barrier,  and  notably  those  of  the  northern 
frontier,  except  at  Maubeuge,  had  been  practically 
classed  as  useless.  There  was  no  need  to  employ 
any  spies  to  ascertain  this  fact,  because  the 
matter  had  been  discussed  very  fully  in  the 
French  military  press.  In  the  same  way  there 
can  be  little  secrecy  about  armaments.  The 
Germans  managed  to  keep  secret  the  fact  that  they 
possessed  an  exceptionally  powerful  weapon  in 

*  The  German  Staff  Map  of  Central  Europe,  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  maps  that  has  ever  been  produced,  includes 
the  ground  covered  by  the  present  war  in  both  east  and  west. 
The  western  sheets  are  a  reduction  of  the  large  scale  French 
and  Belgian  Staff  maps. 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  67 

the  new  i6J-inch  howitzer.  But  such  secrets  are 
very  rare.  The  mere  fact  that  most  improve- 
ments in  armaments  are  at  least  alluded  to  in 
the  army  estimates  of  the  country,  and  become 
the  subjects  of  discussion  in  the  technical  press, 
generally  gives  an  early  clue  to  any  change  that 
is  being  made.  The  French  tried  to  keep  secret 
the  details  of  the  Lebel  rifle  and  of  the  new  quick- 
firing  gun,  but  any  weapon  that  has  to  be 
multiplied  by  hundreds  and  thousands  in  actual 
use  is  soon  known  to  multitudes  of  people  and 
even  casual  talk  about  it  soon  gives  any  practical 
mechanic  an  idea  of  what  its  construction  must 
be.  The  Germans  were  able  to  keep  the  secret 
of  their  big  howitzer  because  they  had  very  few 
of  them.  If  the  peace  had  been  prolonged  for 
a  couple  of  years  more  it  probably  would  have 
been  fully  described  in  half  the  military  reviews 
of  Europe. 

During  the  war  of  1870,  in  some  of  the  popular 
narratives  of  the  time,  great  surprise  was 
expressed  at  the  intimate  local  knowledge 
possessed  by  German  officers  when  they  occupied 
a  French  town.  It  was  generally  said  that  a 
German  who  had  lived  in  the  place  had  been 
sending  home  detailed  information  as  to  the 
prominent  local  residents  and  officials  and  the 
factories  and  resources  of  the  place.  It  is 
obvious,  however,  that  if  such  information  had 
been  sent  in  for  years,  from  about  a  third  of 
France,  it  would  have  formed  a  mass  of  papers 
that  would  have  required  a  whole  army  of  clerks 
to  deal  with  it.  What  actually  was  done  was 
much  simpler,  and  is  certainly  what  is  being  done 


68        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

at  present.  In  most  cases  on  occupying  a  town 
all  the  invader  has  to  do  is  to  take  from  the 
Town  Hall,  or  a  business  office,  or  a  post  office, 
or  even  from  a  bookseller's  shop  some  maps  and 
guides  of  the  place,  a  local  directory,  and  the  tax 
collector's  list  of  the  ratepayers.  He  has  then 
at  his  disposal  more  information  than  even  the 
most  active  of  spies  could  have  supplied.  He 
knows  the  place,  its  resources,  the  names  and 
addresses  of  all  the  officials  and  prominent 
residents  and  the  amount  of  their  incomes.  We 
may  be  quite  sure  that  with  such  ready  means  of 
obtaining  local  information  the  German  Staff 
does  not  encumber  its  offices  with  whole  libraries 
of  useless  reports. 

Of  course  there  is  also  espionage  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  the  use  of  reports  collected 
from  men  who  have  been  resident  in  the  country 
— amongst  them  the  hundreds  of  reservists  who, 
on  the  declaration  of  war,  have  to  give  up  their 
business  in  a  foreign  country  and  return  to  their 
regiments.  As  for  espionage,  there  is  one  aspect 
of  it  which  is  distinctly  criminal.  During  the 
last  few  years  there  have  been  several  cases  of 
Frenchmen  who  accepted  the  pay  of  the  German 
War  Office  and  in  return  for  it  handed  over 
originals  or  copies  of  confidential  documents 
which  came  into  their  hands  in  the  execution 
of  their  duty.  There  was  more  than  one  lament- 
able case  of  this  kind  in  the  French  navy,  and  the 
famous  Dreyfus  court-martial  showed  that  what- 
ever were  the  merits  of  that  particular  case,  the 
German  War  Office  was  endeavouring  to  obtain 
from  men  in  the  French  army  details  of  the  new 
artillery. 


PREPARATION   FOR  WAR  69 

There  is  another  kind  of  espionage  which, 
though  for  the  sake  of  the  national  safety  is 
severely  punished  in  all  countries,  is  not  in  itself 
a  dishonourable  proceeding.  The  English  officers 
who  were  imprisoned  in  Germany  for  having,  in 
the  guise  of  peaceful  yachtsmen,  reconnoitred  the 
naval  defences  of  the  North  Sea  coast,  took  the 
risk  of  being  arrested  and  being  imprisoned,  but 
wrere  doing  an  honourable  service  to  their  country*. 
We  must,  therefore,  in  common  fairness  allow  that 
so  long  as  no  attempt  was  made  to  bribe  men 
to  betray  their  loyalty  to  their  own  country, 
German  officers  who  travelled  in  France  or 
England  with  their  eyes  open  for  any  useful 
information,  were  doing  only  what  our  own 
officers  had  done.  In  the  days  when  Russia 
was  not  our  ally  and  there  was  a  general  expecta- 
tion of  a  war  on  the  north-western  frontier  of 
India,  English  officers  of  the  Indian  army, 
disguised  as  horse-dealers,  travelled  through  the 
Russian  frontier  cities  of  Central  Asia,  and 
brought,  back  much  useful  information  as  to  the 
forces  the  Czar  was  gathering  in  Turkestan. 

Before  the  South  African  war  at  least  one  of 
our  engineer  officers  worked  as  a  navvy  on  the 
new  forts  at  Pretoria.  We  may  take  it,  therefore, 
that  espionage  in  some  forms  is  practised  by 
every  army  in  the  world.  Our  allies,  the  Japanese, 
are  past-masters  of  the  art.  For  at  least  two 
years  before  the  war  with  Russia,  a  colonel 
of  a  Japanese  staff  kept  a  barber's  shop  in  Port 

*  General  Baden-Powell  has  lately  published  in  a  popular 
magazine  an  account  of  his  adventures  as  a  spy  in  various 
countries. 


70        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

Arthur*  The  business  of  the  spy  is  generally 
rather  to  verify  than  to  obtain  information. 
Much  of  his  work  is  following  up  the  clues  supplied 
by  reports  published  in  the  newspapers  or  in  the 
technical  press  as  to  the  contemplated  changes  of 
armament,  new  fortification  works  in  progress, 
and  the  like.  He  has  no  need  to  waste  his  time 
mapping  huge  tracts  of  country  or  compiling 
elaborate  lists  of  local  residents.  All  this  can 
be  found  in  publications  accessible  to  everybody. 
We  have  seen  already  that  German  methods 
of  preparation  for  war  are  thorough  and 
systematic,  and  the  one  point  in  which  German 
espionage  differs  from  that  of  every  other  country, 
except  perhaps  Japan,  is  that  it  is  systematised. 
Of  course  the  great  mass  of  German  residents 
in  foreign  countries  have  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
If  there  were  too  many  agents,  not  only  would 
a  large  amount  of  mere  repetition  be  the  result, 
but  the  risk  of  discovery  would  be  multiplied  at 
every  step.  There  has  been  a  kind  of  panic  about 
spies  as  there  was  in  France  in  1870,  and  the 
wildest  stories  are  told  about  their  operations. 
Even  some  of  the  narratives  that  have  been 
published  as  alleged  confessions  of  spies  are  full 
of  absurd  fictions.  Thus  one  book,  which  has 
attracted  more  attention  than  it  deserves,  pur- 
ports to  tell  how  the  author  conveyed  information 
to  Berlin  about  the  proceedings  of  the  Balkan 
League  against  Turkey  some  years  before  the 
League  came  into  existence.  The  spy  is  a  favourite 
figure  in  popular  fiction,  and  the  novelist  generally 
attributes  to  him  more  complicated  methods  than 
he  ever  need  have  recourse  to.  He  really  proceeds 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  71 

in  two  ways.  Either  he  buys  confidential  docu- 
ments and  books  of  instruction  from  men  who 
are  base  enough  to  betray  the  trust  reposed  in 
them,  and  in  doing  this  he  is  an  accomplice 
in  a  criminal  action,  or  he  acts  more  honourably, 
and  merely  keeps  his  eyes  open  for  matters  that, 
to  his  trained  intelligence,  are  significant,  and 
which  complete  the  information  that  can  be 
obtained  by  anyone  who  regularly  follows  the 
mass  of  details  on  military  and  naval  subjects 
that  is  every  year  and  every  day  published  in 
the  Press. 

To  sum  up,  the  work  of  the  General  Staff  is 
methodical  preparation  for  war,  not  only  by 
its  supervision  of  the  higher  training  of  the 
officers,  but  also  by  the  continual  perfecting  of 
the  mobilisation  plans,  the  supervision  of  the 
railway  system,  and  the  collection  of  information, 
and  also  by  preparation  of  plans  of  campaign 
against  all  probable  enemies — these  plans  being 
carried  forward  only  to  the  first  stage  of  the  war. 

Once  war  has  been  declared  the  Chief  of  the 
General  Staff  becomes  Chief  of  the  Staff  to  the 
Kaiser,  who  acts  as  commander-in-chief  of  the 
field  armies.  A  substitute  takes  his  place  at 
Berlin.  The  ordinary  work  of  the  Staff  goes  on, 
but  a  large  number  of  those  who  were  engaged  in 
it  are  attached  to  the  field  armies  as  Staff  officers, 
or  to  the  Headquarters  Staff  at  the  front.  "  At 
the  front  "  does  not  of  course  mean  in  the  actual 
region  of  the  hard  fighting.  With  battle  fronts 
extending  over  hundreds  of  miles  the  directing 
centre  must  be  placed  at  some  point  far  in  the 
rear  of  the  fighting  line,  where  all  information 


72        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

from  the  various  points  in  contact  with  the 
enemy  can  be  conveyed  by  telegraph  and  the 
necessary  orders  sent  to  the  fighting  front  in 
the  same  way.  This  new  development  really 
began  in  1866,  in  the  campaign  against  Austria 
and  her  allies  until  within  a  few  days  of  the 
great  battle  of  Sadowa  the  headquarters  of  the 
German  armies  was  at  Berlin.  The  armies  were 
concentrated  on  the  frontier  in  the  beginning  of 
June.  War  began  on  the  i6th,  but  it  was  not 
until  the  2oth,  after  several  battles  had  been 
fought,  that  King  William,  Von  Moltke,  and  the 
Headquarters  Staff  left  Berlin  for  Bohemia,  where 
the  decisive  battle  was  fought  on  July  3rd. 
During  the  present  war  for  the  first  month  the 
Kaiser  and  Headquarters  Staff  were  at  Coblenz 
on  the  Rhine.  The  commander  of  an  army  of  a 
million  or  more  of  combatants  can  only  occa- 
sionally pay  a  flying  visit  to  the  fighting  line,  the 
nearer  he  places  his  headquarters  to  the  actual 
front  the  more  difficult  it  is  to  be  sure  of  being 
in  uninterrupted  communication  with  every  part 
of  the  vast  line  of  armies  he  is  directing.  He 
must  choose  for  his  place  of  command  some 
quiet  city  far  to  the  rear,  where  he  has  at  his 
command  the  permanent  telegraph  system  of 
the  country.  It  is  not  so  romantic  a  position 
as  that  of  a  commander-in-chief  riding  amongst 
his  troops  in  the  battle-line.  But  war  is  ceasing 
to  be  romantic.  It  has  become  a  grimly  organised 
business,  prepared  for  in  the  years  of  peace  by  a 
group  of  quiet  middle-aged  men,  with  an  army 
of  clerks  in  what  looks  like  a  huge  business 
office,  and  conducted  by  transferring  this  prosaic 


PREPARATION  FOR  WAR  73 

business  department  to  some  other  place  nearer 
the  scene  of  operations,  where  the  same  busy 
workers  all  day  long  handle  telegraphic  des- 
patches and  letters,  dictate  to  typewriters,  write 
general  orders  to  be  set  up  by  compositors,  send 
off  telegrams  and  talk  through  telephones, 
while  all  that  the  commander-in-chief  sees  of  the 
actual  fighting  is  a  kind  of  rough  model  of  it 
made  by  placing  coloured  blocks  or  sticking  pins 
in  a  big  map  laid  out  upon  a  table. 


CHAPTER  V 
ACTION  ON  DECLARATION  OF  WAR 

MOBILISATION   AND   CONCENTRATION 


armies  have  adopted  so  much  of  the 
German  system  that  in  describing  the  pro- 
cedure of  the  German  army  one  is  nowadays 
giving  an  account  of  what  seems  to  the  reader  to 
be  more  or  less  familiar  and  obvious.  But  until 
after  the  war  of  1870,  mobilisation  in  the  correct 
sense  of  the  word  did  not  exist  in  any  army 
outside  Germany.  There  was  nowhere  else  an 
established  system  of  expanding  in  a  few  days 
the  army  on  the  peace  footing  into  a  war  army, 
and  preparing  every  unit  to  take  the  field. 

Even  now  many  people  use  the  word  mobilisa- 
tion in  an  incorrect  sense.  In  recent  years  one 
often  read  in  the  newspapers  of  this  or  that 
Territorial  regiment  being  mobilised,  when  all 
that  was  really  meant  was  that  it  had  assembled 
for  a  few  days'  manoeuvres  from  a  permanent 
camp,  or  even  for  a  field  day  near  London.  The 
German  word  for  mobilisation  is  '  Mobilmach- 
ung,"  which  literally  means  "  making  ready  to 

74 


ACTION  ON  DECLARATION  OF  WAR  75 

move."  The  steps  taken  when  a  mobilisation 
order  is  published  are  these  : 

Either  simultaneously  with  the  issue  of  the 
order  or  a  few  hours  before  it,  the  military 
authorities  have  taken  possession  of  the  railways. 
All  ordinary  traffic  ceases,  except  perhaps  where 
on  the  great  lines  one  or  two  civilian  trains  are 
run  during  the  day.  Engines  and  rolling  stock 
are  run  from  the  various  branch  lines  on  to  the 
main  lines  leading  to  the  frontier  sidings  and 
goods  depots  are  cleared  out  for  the  arrival  of 
the  troops  and  their  supplies. 

The  reservists  at  once  begin  to  pour  into  the 
places  where  the  regiments  they  belong  to  are 
stationed.  The  territorial  system  of  the  army 
makes  this  process  of  rejoining  a  very  simple 
matter  for  the  greater  number  of  them.  A  certain 
proportion  may  have  to  make  long  journeys  or 
even  to  come  from  abroad,  but  most  of  the  men 
are  living  in  the  district  to  which  their  army 
corps  belongs.  In  the  villages  in  western  Ger- 
many one  sees  at  the  entrance  to  the  main 
street  a  permanent  notice  board  bearing  the 
name  of  the  place  and  that  of  the  regiment  to 
which  the  villagers  belong,  and  even  the  number 
of  the  battalion  and  company.  The  reservists 
are  thus  a  party  of  neighbours.  They  travel 
together  into  the  nearest  town,  where  they  find 
their  battalion  assembled.  All  over  the  country 
these  streams  of  reservists  are  flowing  into  the 
great  centres.  Medical  inspection  and  the 
serving  out  of  uniform,  arms,  equipment,  a 
first  supply  of  ammunition,  and  the  reserve 
rations  for  the  field,  are  the  next  step.  Meanwhile 


76        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

horses  and  transport  have  been  requisitioned, 
regimental  field  stores  and  equipment  are  drawn 
from  the  mobilisation  magazines.  The  ranks 
are  filled  and  the  surplus  number  of  reservists 
turned  over  to  the  depot  formed  at  the  barracks, 
and  the  rest  march  off  with  the  regiment  to  the 
railway  station  where  they  are  to  entrain  for 
the  front. 

The  first  principle  is  that  the  regiment  must 
be  complete  with  all  its  equipment,  including 
provisions  for  three  days  and  the  full  supply  of 
ammunition  before  it  leaves  its  peace  station. 
This  avoids  having  to  send  after  it  drafts  of 
reservists  and  various  odds  and  ends  of  equip- 
ment and  supplies.  In  1870  the  French  acted 
on  a  different  system,  or  rather  without  any 
system.  They  tried  to  carry  out  the  mobilisa- 
tion and  the  concentration  simultaneously.  On 
the  declaration  of  war  regiments  were  moved 
as  they  stood  from  the  barracks,  and  hurried 
to  various  places  in  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  For 
weeks  after,  men  were  arriving  in  handfuls  to 
complete  the  regiment  to  war  strength,  and  in 
the  confusion  at  the  time  often  found  it  difficult 
to  find  out  where  their  regiments  were  and 
wandered  for  days  by  rail  or  road  looking  for  it*. 

*  For  instance,  in  the  second  week  of  the  mobilisation 
nearly  5,000  men  of  various  regiments,  and  all  arms  of  the 
service  who  could  not  rejoin  their  units,  were  living  at 
haphazard  in  and  about  the  railway  station  at  Rheims — 
many  of  them  half-starved,  for  not  being  attached  to  any 
organised  corps  the  distributions  of  rations  were  irregular. 
One  day  there  was  a  riot.  The  5,000  attacked  a  provision 
train  at  the  station,  and  a  regiment  with  fixed  bayonets  had 
to  be  used  to  restore  order. 


ACTION  ON  DECLARATION  OF  WAR    77 

Commanders  of  regiments  at  the  front  were 
telegraphing  or  writing  for  stores  and  equip- 
ment of  all  kinds  without  which  they  could  not 
move,  and  the  result  was  that  even  after  the 
first  battle  many  of  the  units  were  incomplete, 
and  the  men  were  without  some  of  the  most 
necessary  parts  of  their  equipment. 

It  is  now  everywhere  recognised  that  the 
German  rule  is  the  sound  one,  namely  to  com- 
plete each  regiment  at  its  peace  station,  and  not 
think  of  sending  it  to  the  front  until  it  has  been 
brought  up  to  full  strength  and  completely 
provided  with  all  it  requires,  so  that  it  has 
become  a  war  unit  capable  of  marching,  bivou- 
acking, and  fighting.  In  other  words,  it  must  be 
made  mobile  before  it  joins  the  field  army,  and 
this  making  mobile — not  the  mere  assembling  of 
officers  and  men — is  mobilisation  in  its  true  sense. 

The  territorial  system  again  makes  the  con- 
centration of  the  armies  a  fairly  simple  matter. 
Each  army  corps  district  has  its  railway  time- 
table. It  can  be  given  for  a  certain  space  of 
time  exclusive  use  of  a  main  line  of  railway  on 
which  the  branch  lines  of  the  district  converge, 
and  thus  as  battalions,  squadrons  and  batteries 
entrain  and  are  sent  off  they  form  a  succession  of 
railway  trains  conveying  the  whole  fighting 
force  of  the  district  to  the  point  on  the  frontier 
from  which  the  army  corps  is  to  begin  its  advance. 
The  same  railway  system  sends  its  supplies 
forward  to  this  point.  The  front  on  which  the 
armies  are  thus  concentrated  is  not  necessarily 
the  frontier  itself.  It  may  be  several  days' 
march  behind  it.  The  essential  point  is  that  a 


78        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

line  of  concentration  should  be  secure  from  all 
disturbance  from  the  enemy.  In  1870,  when  it 
was  expected  that  the  French  might  make  a 
dash  across  the  border,  without  waiting  for  the 
complete  concentration  of  their  armies,  the 
German  forces  were  assembled  along  the  line  of 
the  Rhine,  and  the  land  frontier  towards  France 
was  for  a  while  held  by  a  few  weak  detachments. 
In  the  recent  war,  both  on  the  eastern  and 
western  frontier,  the  Germans  were  able  to 
concentrate  on  a  front  provided  by  two  parallel 
lines  of  railway  following  the  general  trend  of  the 
frontier,  provided  with  large  military  stations, 
with  long  lines  of  sidings,  and  connected  up  with 
the  main  lines  of  the  country  running  east  and 
west.  On  the  eastern  frontier  these  military 
lines  were  protected  by  a  chain  of  fortresses. 
On  the  western  side,  besides  fortress  protection 
there  was  the  security  given  by  the  concentration 
taking  place  partly  behind  the  frontier  of  neutral 
Luxemburg  and  Belgium.  In  both  cases,  for 
many  years  measures  have  been  taken  to  protect 
the  concentration  on  this  double  front,  by  keeping 
an  extra  force  in  the  frontier  districts. 

The  line  on  which  the  armies  are  concentrated 
is  decided  by  the  plan  of  campaign.  We  have 
seen  that  in  Von  Moltke's  view  this  plan  could  not 
go  much  farther  than  grouping  the  armies  on 
the  frontier,  and  giving  them  their  first  general 
declaration.  In  German  military  literature  the 
word  '  Aufmarsch,"  literally  '  marching  up/  ex- 
presses the  last  stage  of  the  concentration  for  war. 
It  means  more  than  merely  that  the  troops  have 
been  brought  up  to  the  frontier.  It  implies 


ACTION  ON  DECLARATION  OF  WAR   79 

the  further  condition  that  they  have  been  placed 
there  in  a  certain  array,  ready  to  advance. 

The    great    secret    carefully    kept    by    every 
European  War  Office  is  always  what  this  array 
is  to  be.     How  the  great  battle  is  to  be  formed 
across  the  frontier  ;   how  many   of   the   regular 
corps   will   be   placed   in   this   or  that   position, 
and  what  reserve  corps  can  be  formed  in  them 
for  the  first  move.     To  know  all  this,  would  be 
to  have  a  very  fair  idea  of  the  first  movements 
in  the  campaign.     Something  has  been  said  in 
the  last  chapter  on  the  subject  of  "  Espionage." 
If  the  spy  can  ever  supply  useful    information 
it  is  during  the  important  days  of  the  concentra- 
tion, when  the  news  that  this  or  that  regiment 
is  moving  by  rail  to  such  or  such  a  point  of 
the   frontier,   is   enough   to   tell   that   the   army 
corps  to  which  it  belongs  is  concentrating  there. 
And  scraps  of  information  like  these  from  various 
sources  might  easily  give  the  whole  order  of  the 
Aufmarsch,  and  a  clear  key  to  the  first  operations 
of  the  war.     This  is  why  in  the  fortnight  after 
mobilisation,    the    censorship    is    rigidly    severe, 
and  the  newspapers  are  no  longer,  as  in  former 
days,  allowed  to  publish  even  a  line  about  the 
departure   of   the   troops.     In   the   present   war 
English  travellers  from  Germany,  who  left  the 
Rhineland    by   way    of    Switzerland,    were    able 
to  tell  of  a  very  marked  movement  of  military 
trains  to  the  northward,  indicating  a  concentra- 
tion of  the  main  force  towards  Luxemburg  and 
Belgium.       Doubtless   there   were   some   among 
them  who  knew  enough  of  the  German  army 
to  be  able  to  note  the  numbers  and  names  of 


80        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

regiments  as  they  passed  to  various  stations. 
And  this  would,  under  the  circumstances,  be  very 
valuable  information  in  Paris  and  London. 
But  on  the  whole,  the  Germans  were  able  to 
conceal,  until  after  the  actual  operations  began, 
the  war  array  of  their  armies.  We  have  proof 
of  this  in  the  way  that  the  information  published 
in  the  London  Press  by  a  military  correspondent 
known  to  be  in  touch  with  our  War  Office,  and 
the  information  published  in  St.  Petersburg  on 
semi-official  authority,  gave  a  very  widely  different 
account  of  the  German  arrangements.  The 
London  information  placed  two  Austrian  army 
corps  in  Alsace,  but  we  now  know  that  at  the 
outset  of  the  war  all  the  Austrian  army  corps 
were  either  in  Galkia  or  on  the  Servian  frontier. 


CHAPTER  VI 
HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT 

WAR  IDEALS  AND  METHODS  OF  THE  GERMAN  ARMY 

'"THE  German  army  was  the  first  to  use  in  war 
on  a  great  scale  the  breech-loading  rifle  and 
field-gun.  In  the  war  with  Austria  in  1866,  the 
infantry  was  opposed  to  troops  armed  with  the 
old  muzzle-loader.  The  fighting  was  carried 
out  much  as  it  had  been  in  earlier  wars,  namely, 
by  the  advance  of  troops  in  close  order,  covered 
by  lines  of  skirmishers.  The  distinctive  point 
of  the  Prussian  infantry  attack  in  those  days 
was  that  behind  the  thin  firing  line  of  skirmishers 
there  was  neither  a  prolonged  shoulder  to  shoulder 
line  of  infantry,  nor  the  massive  columns  that 
had  been  used  in  the  later  Napoleonic  wars. 
The  Prussian  infantry  manoeuvred  in  company 
columns,  each  company  having  its  three  sections 
in  line  one  behind  the  other.  In  the  front  line 
of  battle  one  of  these  sections  was  usually  sent 
out  as  skirmishers.  It  was  a  formation  which 
combined  the  advantages  of  line  and  column. 

After  1866  there  were  many  discussions  as  to 
how    the    infantry    fight    would    be    conducted 

F  81 


82        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

between  armies  both  of  which  were  armed  with 
the  new  weapons.  It  was  recognised  that  the 
Prussian  infantry  could  not  hope  to  repeat  the 
easy  victories  of  1866.  There  was  even  a 
tendency  towards  the  view  that  the  quick  fire 
of  the  new  rifle  had  given  such  a  superiority  to 
the  defence  that  there  must  be  a  modification 
of  the  traditional  view  that  the  offensive  must 
be  sought  for  everywhere  and  always  as  the 
surest  means  of  victory. 

Through  the  whole  of  German  military  litera- 
ture from  the  days  of  Frederick  the  Great  down 
to  our  own,  the  one  dominant  idea  is  that  the 
advantage  in  battle  lies  with  the  attack.  The 
defensive  is  regarded  as  a  confession  of  weakness, 
and  the  tactics  of  defence  are  only  to  be  adopted 
locally  and  temporarily.  But  all  over  Europe 
the  first  impression  made  by  the  description  the 
war  correspondents  sent  from  the  battle-fields  of 
1866  gave  the  impression  that  the  rapid  fire  of 
the  new  rifle  would  make  a  battle  front  all  but 
unapproachable,  and  more  than  one  writer 
insisted  that  the  battle  of  the  future  would  be 
won  by  forcing  an  enemy  to  take  the  offensive 
and  then  destroying  him  with  rifle  fire  from  a 
prepared  position,  the  full  effect  of  the  victory 
being  reaped  by  a  counter-attack  when  the 
offensive  had  utterly  exhausted  itself.  French 
writers  very  freely  adopted  this  view,  and  it  had 
an  unfortunate  influence  on  the  tactics  of  the 
French  army  in  1870.  Even  in  Moltke's  instruc- 
tions in  the  period  between  1866  and  1870,  there 
are  passages  which  at  first  sight  suggest  that  he 
was  inclined  to  exaggerate  the  advantage  con- 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          83 

ferred  by  the  new  weapons  on  the  defence.  But 
the  old  Prussian  tradition  prevented  such  ideas 
from  seriously  influencing  the  battle  methods  of 
the  army.  Attack  might  be  more  difficult,  but 
it  was  the  only  plan  that  gave  promise  of  really 
decisive  results. 

Theoretically  it  was  recognised  that  the  new 
weapons  would  make  new  battle  tactics  necessary. 
But  it  was  difficult  at  first  to  realise  what  they 
would  be,  and  the  conservatism  that  is  a  powerful 
force  in  every  army  produced  a  tendency  to 
keep  as  much  of  the  old  ways  as  possible.  Hence 
in  the  battles  of  1870,  though  it  was  recognised 
from  the  very  outset  that  the  attack  must  begin 
with  an  advance  in  dispersed  order,  this  was  at 
first  regarded  as  only  a  preliminary  expedient 
to  prepare  the  way  for  an  advance  in  close  order 
at  an  early  stage.  In  earlier  wars  the  skirmishers 
who  opened  the  fight  had  formed  a  loose  firing 
line  behind  which  shoulder  to  shoulder  lines  of 
infantry  came  into  action.  In  the  first  battles 
of  1870,  more  men  were  pushed  into  the  skirmish- 
ing line  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  fight,  but 
this  was  still  regarded  as  a  mere  opening  of  the 
battle.  But  presently  it  was  found  that  to 
move  close  bodies  into  the  zone  of  effective  fire 
meant  heavy  loss.  The  most  terrible  lessons 
were  those  of  the  battles  of  August  i6th  and 
i8th,  when  a  Hanoverian  brigade  in  its  attack 
on  the  French  at  Mars-la-Tour  lost  over  50  per 
cent,  of  its  strength  in  a  few  minutes  and  the 
close  ordered  attack  of  the  Prussian  Guard  at 
St.  Privat  was  brought  to  a  standstill  in  less 
than  half  an  hour  with  the  loss  of  nearly  six 
thousand  officers  and  men. 


84        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

After  these  terrible  days  the  old  close  order 
was  doomed.  The  skirmishing  line  became  hence- 
forth recognised  as  the  firing  line.  Instead  of 
merely  clearing  the  way  for  lines  and  masses  of 
troops  to  follow,  it  was  gradually  to  work  its 
way  forward,  fed  from  the  rear  by  reinforcements 
to  replace  its  losses.  It  was  to  be  just  dense 
enough  to  bring  as  many  rifles  as  possible  into 
action.  It  was  to  be  supported  by  other  lines 
in  the  same  open  order  from  which  it  would  be 
fed  with  men  and  ammunition,  and  the  decision 
would  be  produced  by  its  beating  down  the 
fire  of  the  opposing  enemy,  and  as  this  return 
fire  weakened  the  moment  would  come  when 
the  supports  in  rear  could  go  forward  with  the 
firing  line  to  clear  the  hostile  position. 

This  new  kind  of  fighting  evolved  itself  at  first 
without  any  precise  orders  or  directions.  Officers 
and  men  found  they  could  only  get  forward  by 
opening  out,  feeding  the  firing  line,  and  working 
onward  from  cover  to  cover.  In  the  battles  of 
earlier  days  it  was  only  the  skirmisher  who  could 
lie  down  behind  a  rock  or  bank  under  fire  to  take 
cover ;  for  the  officers  and  men  of  the  main 
fighting  line  such  an  attitude  would  have  been 
regarded  as  cowardly.  But  under  the  storm 
of  bullets  from  the  new  rifles,  taking  cover  became 
a  necessity.  For  the  German  Army  of  1870 
battle  experiences  gave  very  plain  lessons,  which 
however  were  only  learned  with  much  sacrifice 
of  life.  In  the  second  stage  of  the  war  the 
Staff  began  to  embody  these  lessons  in  provisional 
regulations  and  orders.  The  first  attempt  to 
regulate  the  new  method  of  fighting  in  dispersed 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          85 

order  with  successive  lines  of  supports  was  made 
at  the  re-capture  of  Le  Bourget  during  the  siege 
of  Paris.  To  use  a  phrase  that  came  into  fashion 
at  the  time,  '  It  was  an  attempt  to  organise  the 
necessary  disorder  of  the  attack." 

To  old-fashioned  soldiers  the  disorder  seemed 
hopeless,  and  a  lamentable  military  decadence 
from  the  accurately  ordered  lines  in  which  men 
were  drilled  in  the  barrack  square  and  marchei 
into  battle  in  the  days  of  the  muzzle-loader. 
After  the  war,  the  new  methods  found  their  way 
into  the  drill  books  of  all  armies.  But  every- 
where,, and  notably  in  Germany  itself,  there  was 
a  constant  effort  to  invent  some  way  of  bringing 
the  dispersed  attack  into  some  fixed  pattern. 
Every  army  in  Europe  adopted  and  rejected 
impracticable  schemes  for  working  out  an  infantry 
attack  on  one  or  other  of  these  set  patterns. 

In  Germany  there  was  at  first  a  disposition  to 
represent  the  methods  of  the  German  Staff  and 
the  German  Army  in  the  war  of  1870  as  something 
that  nearly  approached  perfection.  Later  on 
there  came  a  more  critical  period.  A  group  of 
military  writers — most  of  whose  names  are  now 
household  words  amongst  students  of  \var — 
began  to  examine  more  closely  the  events  of 
1870,  and  to  write  very  freely  about  them.  For 
the  first  time  the  public  began  to  read  realistic 
descriptions  of  what  the  actual  fighting  had 
been  like,  and  to  hear  of  the  weak  points  of  the 
new  battle  methods.  Fritz  Hoenig  and  Meckel 
were  especially  frank  in  these  matters.  They 
described  the  long  wide  trail  of  shirkers  and 
stragglers  left  behind  in  the  attack.  The  men 


86        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

who  would  not  move  forward  from  cover,  the 
little  groups  that  huddled  for  hours  in  hollows 
and  amongst  trees,  the  leaderless  knots  of  men 
wandering  aimlessly  behind  the  fighting  line, 
the  confusion  of  the  fight  itself  with  men  of 
different  companies  and  regiments  mixed  to- 
gether and  carried  forward  by  whichever  officers 
had  the  energy  to  take  command.  Meckel,  who 
was  afterwards  the  instructor  of  the  Japanese 
army,  insisted  in  a  famous  pamphlet  that  the 
remedy  was  to  keep  men  together  in  something 
approaching  the  old  close  order,  and  by  an  iron 
discipline,  bring  into  action  every  rifle  for  which 
there  was  room  on  the  fighting  front,  trusting 
to  the  increased  volume  of  fire  to  compensate 
for  the  loss  that  would  necessarily  be  incurred. 

There  is  something  to  be  said  for  the  view 
thus  taken.  It  is  quite  true  that,  as  Meckel 
puts  it,  battles  are  won,  not  by  taking  care  to 
avoid  loss,  but  by  hitting  hard.  And  a  destruc- 
tive fire  poured  into  an  enemy  is  the  best  pro- 
tection against  his  answering  fire.  The  German 
drill-books  and  army  regulations  never  explicitly 
adopted  the  return  to  close  order  for  which 
Meckel  pleaded.  But  at  the  German  manoeuvres 
for  years  before  the  war,  it  was  quite  evident 
that  the  theory  had  considerable  influence  on 
the  accepted  methods  of  battle  leading.  Dense 
firing  lines  supported  at  short  range  by  troops 
in  close  order  were  a  feature  of  these  manoeuvre 
battles*. 

*  It  was  easy  to  form  a  misleading  impression  of  the 
density  of  the  firing  lines  at  the  German  manoeuvres. 
Towards  the  end  of  an  attack  the  line  would  sometimes  be 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          87 

To  put  the  matter  very  simply,  the  accepted 
theory  seems  to  be  this.  There  is,  say,  a  thousand 
yards  of  front  available.  If  a  firing  line  is  formed 
such  as  we  used  in  South  Africa,  there  might  be 
two  hundred  rifles  in  action  on  this  frontage. 
It  would  be  easy  for  each  man  to  find  cover  and 
they  would  thus  form  a  dispersed  target  for 
hostile  fire.  But  on  the  same  frontage  one 
might  put  four  times  the  number  of  men  in  line — 
not  necessarily  the  evenly  dressed  line  of  the 
drill-ground,  of  course — and  though  more  men 
would  thus  be  exposed  to  fire,  the  volume  of  fire 
would  be  four  times  heavier.  The  German 
argued  that  the  denser  firing  line  would  crush 
out  the  fire  of  its  dispersed  opponent  and  inflict 
loss  not  only  on  the  men  in  action,  but  on  the 
supports  reinforcing  them.  We  have  seen  the 
result  of  this  theory  of  the  fire  fight  in  the  battles 
of  the  present  war,  where  the  Germans  have 
almost  invariably  pushed  forward  closely  arrayed 
firing  lines,  which  gave  our  men  the  impression 
that  they  were  "  coming  on  in  crowds/' 

There  is  no  doubt  that  in  the  earlier  battles 
not  only  were  dense  firing  lines  used,  but  when 

three  or  four  deep  in  places,  but  this  was  because  instead  of 
falling  out  men  to  represent  casualties,  it  was  supposed 
that  casualties  had  occurred  and  reinforcements  were  sent 
into  the  line,  but  all  the  men,  both  the  imaginary  casualties 
and  those  who  were  still  firing,  went  forward  together.  I 
once  remarked  to  a  German  Staff  Officer  at  manoeuvres  that 
the  line  was  becoming  a  very  dense  one,  and  he  replied, 
"  You  must  imagine  that  three-fourths  of  these  men  have 
been  hit  and  left  behind.  We  bring  them  on  with  the  firing 
line,  so  that  we  have  not  to  collect  them  at  the  end  of  the 
attack  from  all  kinds  of  places  over  a  mile  of  ground  behind 
the  line." 


88        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

the  attempt  was  made  to  push  home  the  attack, 
the  supports  came  on  in  successive  waves,  closed 
upon  the  firing  line,  and  formed  a  crowd.  When 
the  war  had  lasted  nearly  three  months,  the  losses 
incurred  led  to  an  attempt  being  made  to  intro- 
duce again  the  dispersed  order  of  attack.  In  an 
army  order  issued  to  the  Fourth  German  Army 
from  the  headquarters  at  Brussels  by  the  Duke 
of  Wurtemburg  on  October  2ist,  it  was  pointed 
out  that  unnecessary  loss  had  been  incurred,  not 
only  by  insufficient  reconnaissance  of  the  enemy's 
positions  before  the  attack,  and  premature 
attempts  to  assault  it,  but  also  by  ;  the  use  of 
too  dense  formations/1  But,  as  has  already  been 
noted,  though  the  drill-book  enjoined  the  dis- 
persed order  in  attack,  the  working  tradition  of 
the  army  had  for  many  years  encouraged  the 
other  and  more  costly  method. 

In  the  war  of  1870  and  for  some  time  after, 
the  accepted  theory  of  the  use  of  artillery  in  the 
fight  was  that  it  began  by  engaging  and  en- 
deavouring to  silence  the  enemy's  batteries,  and 
then  shelled  the  hostile  infantry's  positions  as  a 
prelude  to  the  attack.  The  battle  was  thus 
supposed  to  begin  with  an  artillery  duel.  But 
gradually  this  programme  of  the  battle  was 
modified.  The  infantry  advance  was  to  begin 
immediately.  The  batteries  of  the  attack  were 
to  take  for  their  targets  from  the  very  outset 
not  only  the  enemy's  guns  but  also  his  infantry 
positions,  and  the  fire  of  the  artillery  was  to  be 
continued  up  to  the  last  moment  over  the  heads 
of  the  attacking  infantry.  In  order  to  facilitate 
the  attack  on  entrenched  positions  each  army 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          89 

corps  was  given  several  batteries  of  light  and 
heavy  howitzers  to  deliver  a  high-angled  fire  of 
big  shells.  Marching  arrangements  had  always 
included  the  placing  of  the  batteries  well  to  the 
front,  so  that  they  could  come  into  action  as 
early  as  possible.  But  for  some  time  after 
1870  there  had  been  an  accepted  custom  of 
keeping  back  a  certain  number  of  them  as  an 
artillery  reserve.  The  modern  German  idea  is, 
however,  that  guns  kept  in  reserve  are  wasted. 
Every  gun  must  come  into  action  as  soon  as 
a  position  can  be  found  for  it. 

Finally,  in  the  last  ten  years  it  has  become  the 
practice  to  put  large  numbers  of  machine  guns 
into  the  firing  line.  The  German  army  was 
slow  to  adopt  the  machine  gun,  but  once  it 
recognised  its  value  they  were  provided  for  the 
infantry  in  large  numbers.  On  the  line  of 
march  they  are  carried  in  waggons.  When  the 
attack  begins  they  are  brought  out  into  the 
firing  line,  singly  or  in  groups.  The  mounting 
is  so  low  that  a  man  can  work  the  gun  while 
lying  down,  and  gun  and  mounting  can  be  easily 
carried  forward  by  two  men.  The  German 
attack  is  therefore  a  dense  firing  line  of  rifles, 
studded  here  and  there  with  machine  guns,  and 
assisted  in  its  advance  by  the  fire  of  a  huge 
array  of  batteries  of  long-ranged  quick-firers 
and  heavy  field  howitzers.  The  leading  idea  of 
the  attack  is  to  push  forward  the  infantry  as 
far  as  possible  without  revealing  its  position  by 
opening  fire,  and  then  when  effective  rifle  range 
is  reached,  to  develop  as  rapidly  as  possible  a 
heavy  fire  from  the  largest  number  of  men  that 


90        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

can  use  their  rifles  along  the  front  available. 
The  attack  uses  whatever  cover  it  may  find  in 
its  direct  line  of  advance,  but  only  entrenches 
itself  if  it  is  brought  to  a  standstill.  It  is  held 
that  to  make  it  a  general  rule  to  make  light 
entrenchments  at  each  halt  of  advance  is  only 
to  produce  delay  and  divert  a  number  of  men 
from  the  more  useful  occupation  of  firing.  The 
infantry  are  very  carefully  trained  and  prac- 
tised in  entrenching,  but  entrenchments  are  for 
those  parts  of  the  line  which  act  on  the  defensive, 
and  their  object  is  to  enable  those  sections  of  the 
front  to  be  more  lightly  held,  thus  sparing  men 
for  the  part  of  the  battle  line  where  the  attack 
is  being  delivered.  Once  begun,  the  attack  must 
be  pushed  home  at  all  costs,  and  the  accepted 
doctrine  is  that,  though  heavy  loss  may  thus 
be  incurred,  it  is  in  the  end  less  than  the  sacrifices 
that  would  be  entailed  by  failure,  or  by  a  pro- 
tracted struggle. 

As  to  the  general  form  of  the  battle,  it  is 
often  said  that  the  German  Staff  has  a  kind  of 
fixed  pattern  for  securing  victory.  The  current 
idea  appears  to  be  that  an  attempt  is  always 
made  to  turn  and  envelop  one  or  both  flanks  of 
the  enemy.  Indeed,  one  popular  writer  on 
German  methods  published  not  long  ago  a 
description,  illustrated  by  elaborate  diagrams,  of 
the  standard  attack  of  a  German  army,  the 
scheme  showing  the  centre  held  back  and  the 
wings  pushed  forward  on  a  wide  front  so  as  to 
encircle  both  flanks  of  the  opponent.  This 
would  be  really  not  the  Prussian  method  of 
attack,  but  the  Zulu  crescent  magnified  to  an 
enormous  scale. 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT        91 

The  real  fact  is  that  the  German  Army  has  no 
"  sealed  pattern '  for  its  attack.  Like  every 
other  army,  it  of  course  accepts  the  principle- 
old  as  organised  warfare  itself — that  the  flank 
attack  combined  with  the  attack  in  front  gives 
the  most  decisive  result.  Some  of  the  most 
famous  battles  in  the  Prussian  and  German 
wars  of  1866-1870  were  won  by  a  flank  movement, 
or  a  complete  envelopment  of  the  enemy.  At 
Sadowa,  the  decisive  stroke  was  the  flank  attack 
of  the  Crown  Prince's  army  on  the  Austrian  right, 
combined  with  the  frontal  attack  of  the  armies 
of  Prince  Frederick  Charles  and  the  army  of  the 
Elbe.  At  Gravelotte,  in  1870,  the  decisive  move 
was  the  attack  on  the  French  right  by  the 
Saxons  on  the  flank  and  the  Prussian  Guard  in 
front.  Neither  of  these  could  properly  be  des- 
cribed as  enveloping  attacks  :  the  object  was  not 
to  surround  the  enemy  but  to  bring  an  over- 
whelming force  upon  one  of  its  flanks  and  roll 
up  his  line.  There  was  just  one  instance  of  a 
real  enveloping  attack.  It  was  at  Sedan  in  1870. 
In  this  case  the  French  army,  already  harassed 
and  demoralised  and  greatly  inferior  in  numbers, 
was  actually  surrounded  in  the  hollow  of  the 
hills  about  Sedan,  and  crushed  by  an  over- 
whelming force  of  artillery.  But  this  was  a 
situation  that  even  the  most  sanguine  of  generals 
could  hardly  hope  to  reproduce. 

Not  in  the  German  Army  alone,  but  in  every 
army  in  the  world,  and  not  only  in  the  operations 
of  great  masses  of  men,  but  in  the  action  of 
small  detachments,  it  is  accepted  as  a  principle 
that  an  effort  must  be  made  to  combine  a  flank 


92        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

attack  with  the  attack  in  front.  Since  the 
introduction  of  rapid-firing  rifles  and  cannon, 
the  difficulties  of  the  frontal  attack  have  made 
the  flank  attack  more  important  than  ever 
before.  It  is  quite  true  that  on  the  actual 
ground  where  the  force  attacking  the  flank 
comes  in  contact  with  the  enemy,  the  fighting 
is  frontal.  But  the  great  gain  is  that  the  flank 
defence  has  to  meet  superior  numbers  and  the 
converging  fire  of  long-range  artillery,  and  the 
flanking  movement  threatens  the  line  of  retreat 
and,  in  case  of  great  armies,  the  whole  line  of 
communications.  Outflanking  movements  are 
met  by  bringing  up  new  troops  to  prolong  the 
battle  line  in  the  new  direction.  Thus  during 
the  fighting  on  the  Aisne,  when  it  was  found 
that  the  German  front  was  too  strong  to  be 
forced  by  direct  attack,  an  attempt  was  made 
to  strike  at  its  right  and  right  rear  by  a  flank 
movement  from  the  direction  of  Amiens.  This 
was  met  by  the  Germans  moving  up  troops  to 
prolong  their  right  line  to  the  northwards  and, 
as  the  outflanking  movement  extended  gradually 
in  the  same  direction,  the  line  of  defence  was 
also  prolonged,  till  at  last  in  October  the  flanks 
of  the  battle  lines  rested  on  the  sea. 

It  would  seem  that  with  the  enormous  numbers 
brought  into  the  field  in  modern  war,  and  the 
fronts  of  hundreds  of  miles  on  which  they  are 
engaged,  the  gigantic  battle  that  results  must 
always  become  a  conflict  between  two  long  and 
more  or  less  parallel  lines,  and  that  there  can  be 
no  question  of  the  flank  attack  that  secured 
victory  at  Sadowa  and  Gravelotte.  It  has  been 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          93 

argued  from  these  facts  that  the  "  parallel 
battle  '  is  inevitable  in  modern  war,  and  that 
therefore  there  is  a  bankruptcy  of  German 
methods,  the  enveloping  movement  round  a 
flank  being  impossible.  This  is,  of  course,  a 
conclusion  not  warranted  by  any  sound  view  of 
the  facts.  In  much  of  the  current  criticism 
on  the  present  war,  it  almost  seems  that  the 
writers  have  a  fixed  idea  that  with  these  battle 
lines  of  hundreds  of  miles  the  only  point  where 
a  flank  movement  can  be  attempted  is  at  one 
or  other  of  these  extremities.  But  it  is  equally 
true  for  both  sides  that  what  is  practically  a 
flank  movement  may  be  attempted  and  crowned 
with  success  at  many  points  in  the  long  line. 
In  our  newspaper  maps,  we  see  the  German  line 
and  the  Allied  line  represented  by  two  continuous 
and  roughly  parallel  black  strokes,  winding  like 
snakes  across  the  maps  of  France  and  Belgium. 
But  of  course  in  actual  fact  the  lines  are  not 
equally  strong  everywhere,  nor  is  there  absolute 
continuity.  On  these  prolonged  fronts,  besides 
attempting  to  turn  the  extremities  of  the  line, 
the  rival  commanders  may  try  to  find  a  weak 
spot  in  the  opposing  line  and  break  through 
there.  If  they  succeeded,  the  victor  will  have 
the  choice  of  two  flanks  against  which  to  operate 
at  the  point  where  the  line  is  broken,  and  there 
may  follow  a  great  battle,  which  will  repre- 
sent a  new  Sadowa  or  Gravelotte  on  a  gigantic 
scale. 

In  following  the  story  of  the  war  our  attention 
here  in  England  has  naturally  been  riveted  upon 
that  part  of  the  long  line  where  our  own  soldiers 


94        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

have  been  fighting.  This  is  partly  the  result  of 
our  keen  interest  in  our  own  men,  and  partly  to 
the  fact  that  we  have  heard  very  little  of  the 
details  of  the  operations  of  the  French  armies, 
or  of  the  German  armies  opposed  to  them.  But 
enough  is  known  to  show  that  in  the  first  stage 
of  the  war  the  German  battle  leading  on  a  grand 
scale  was  modelled  precisely  on  this  idea  of 
breaking  through  the  long  Allied  line,  and  then 
striking  at  the  flanks  thus  created.  In  the  last 
days  of  August  and  the  first  week  of  September, 
before  the  tide  turned  and  victory  was  won  on  the 
Marne,  we  here  in  England  heard  very  little  except 
news  of  the  movements  of  Sir  John  French's 
force,  and  Von  Kluck's  attempts  to  outflank  its 
left  were  naturally  supposed  to  be  the  main 
effort  of  the  enemy.  But  since  then  we  have 
learned  something  of  the  great  operations  on 
other  parts  of  the  line.  It  is  evident  that  the 
general  retreat  of  the  Allies  was  the  result  of 
not  a  movement  against  their  extreme  flank  in 
Belgium,  but  a  blow  delivered  at  their  centre 
by  a  huge  mass  of  troops  concentrated  in  the 
third  week  of  August  in  the  wooded  and  hilly 
country  of  the  Ardennes.  Those  who  believed 
in  the  "  sealed  pattern  "  method  of  attack  being 
the  only  one  that  our  German  opponents  would 
adopt,  thought  they  saw  in  the  fighting  about 
Mons  and  the  flank  attack  on  the  extreme  Allied 
left  the  repetition  of  what  they  assumed  to  be 
the  invariable  battle  plan  of  the  German  Staff. 
But  there  is  no  such  invariable  plan,  and  in  this 
case  the  main  stroke  was  at  the  Allied  centre, 
its  success  enabling  the  Germans  in  reaping  its 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          95 

results    to    have  recourse   to    a  series   of  flank 
attacks  once  the  line  was  broken. 

The  point  is  worth  explaining  in  detail,  as  it 
seems  likely  that  this  will  be  the  method  which 
will  give  decisive  results  in  the  fighting  of  pro- 
longed fronts  that  are  characteristic  of  the 
wars  of  armed  nations.  In  the  third  week  of 
August  the  Allied  line  extended  along  the 
eastern  front  of  the  fortified  region  in  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  then  bent  round  to  the  westward  by 
the  north  of  the  Argonne  forest  and  the  Ardennes 
along  the  Meuse  to  near  Namur,  and  thence 
along  the  river  Sambre  and  the  Belgian  frontier 
by  Chaleroi  to  Mons  and  Conde,  where  the 
British  army  held  the  extreme  left  of  this 
enormous  line. 

All  along  this  front  of  hundreds  of  miles  the 
German  armies  faced  the  Allies,  but  in  the 
right  centre  among  the  woods  of  the  Ardennes 
two  German  armies  had  been  massed,  one 
behind  the  other.  Nearest  the  French  frontier 
was  the  Duke  of  Wurtemburg's  army — behind 
it,  to  the  northward,  was  the  army  of  General 
Von  Hausen  (two  Saxon  army  corps  and  a  corps 
from  central  Germany).  The  Duke  of  Wur- 
temburg's army  was  attacked  from  the  French 
centre  on  the  middle  Meuse  and  this  attack  was 
repulsed  with  heavy  loss.  Then  came  the  move 
which  led  to  the  general  retirement  of  the  Allied 
line.  The  collapse  of  the  defence  of  Namur 
enabled  the  Saxon  army  to  cross  the  Meuse 
between  Namur  and  Dinant,  and  to  combine 
a  flank  attack  against  the  right  rear  of  the 
French  on  the  Sambre  with  Von  Billow's  attack 


96        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

in  front.  Before  this  double  attack  the  French 
gave  way.  The  Saxons  moving  down  the  left 
bank  of  the  Meuse  made  a  flank  attack  upon  the 
French  army  holding  the  line  of  the  river  from 
Mezi^res  eastward  by  Sedan,  and  with  this  was 
combined  a  front  attack  by  the  Wurtemburg 
army.  Again  the  French  line  gave  way.  The 
Saxon  army  thus  in  three  days  delivered  two 
decisive  flank  attacks,  left  and  right,  from  the 
gap  into  which  it  had  broken  between  Namur 
and  Dinant.  The  French  centre  was  in  full 
retreat  towards  Rethel  and  Rheims.  The  retire- 
ment of  the  French  left  from  the  Sambre  had 
exposed  our  own  troops  after  their  victorious 
defence,  on  August  the  23rd,  to  an  attack  by 
overwhelming  numbers,  and  it  was  then  that 
Von  Kluck  and  Von  Billow  made  the  attempt 
to  cut  off  and  destroy  the  British  force.  Von 
Billow  hustling  the  retreating  French  on  our 
right,  and  Von  Kluck  trying  in  vain  to  turn  our 
left  and  drive  Sir  John  French's  army  to  the 
eastward  into  the  hands  of  his  colleague.  The 
splendid  fighting  of  our  men  and  the  wonderful 
leadership  of  our  generals,  not  only  saved  our 
army  but  at  the  same  time  covered  the  retire- 
ment of  the  broken  French  line,  but  it  will  be 
seen  that  the  movement  that  led  to  this  general 
retreat  was  not  a  turning  operation  against  the 
extreme  left  of  the  long  line,  but  Von  Hausen's 
stroke  south  of  Namur,  which  cut  into  the  line 
at  its  left  centre  and  then  gave  the  opportunity 
of  delivering  telling  attacks  against  the  flanks  of 
the  broken  line,  first  to  the  right  towards  the 
Sambre,  and  then  to  the  left  along  the  middle 
Meuse. 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          97 

We  may  take  it,  therefore,  that  in  the  great 
battles  of  to-day  the  existing  flank  will  not 
always  be  the  dangerous  point.  The  decision 
will  be  reached  by  breaking  through  at  some 
weak  point  and  then  following  up  the  success 
thus  obtained  by  a  recourse  to  combined  frontal 
and  flanking  operations.  To  break  through 
anywhere  will  only  be  possible  by  accumulating 
a  superior  force  at  this  point,  and  if  one  part 
of  the  long  line  is  thus  to  be  strengthened  for 
attack  other  parts  of  the  line  must  be  stripped 
of  a  certain  number  of  men  and  guns.  On  the 
parts  of  the  line  thus  weakened,  the  fighting 
will  have  to  be  on  the  defensive  and,  to  com- 
pensate for  decreased  numbers,  those  parts  of  the 
line  must  be  heavily  entrenched. 

We  thus  arrive  at  the  characteristic  features 
of  these  battles  on  prolonged  fronts.  In  the  great 
battle  which  began  upon  the  Aisne  and  gradually 
extended  to  the  coasts  of  the  Channel,  we  have 
seen  more  than  one  German  attempt  to  break 
through.  Thus  when  the  detailed  story  of  the 
battle  can  be  written,  it  will  probably  be  found 
that,  for  at  least  ten  days  at  the  end  of  September, 
there  was  a  great  concentration  of  German 
troops  about  Rove  and  Lassigny,  places  which 
were  taken  and  retaken  again  and  again.  They 
are  near  the  point  where  the  long  line  running 
east  and  west  from  Verdun  along  the  Aisne  turns 
to  the  northwards,  and  at  this  point  the  Germans 
had  not  only  to  strengthen  themselves  on  a 
dangerously  projecting  salient,  but  had  the 
advantage  that  they  could  easily  move  consider- 
able numbers  by  road  and  rail  from-  behind 


g8        THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

their  entrenched  position  on  the  Aisne.  All  the 
accounts  go  to  show  that  they  lost  very  heavily 
at  this  point.  But  the  German  battle  methods 
inevitably  lead  to  heavy  loss  in  the  fight  for  any 
point  the  capture  of  which  would  have  a  serious 
result. 

Through  all  German  military  literature  there 
runs  the  idea  that  loss  must  be  freely  in- 
curred for  the  sake  of  obtaining  a  rapid  decision. 
In  all  the  earlier  wars  of  Germany  in  1864,  in  1866, 
and  in  1870,  the  price  was  paid  and  the  result 
obtained.  The  war  of  1866  was  over  in  seven 
weeks.  In  1870,  within  a  month  of  the  first 
battle,  one  French  army  was  locked  up  in  Metz 
and  the  other  had  been  taken  prisoner  at  Sedan. 
It  is  clear  that  in  the  present  war  an  effort  was 
made  to  obtain  the  same  rapid  results,  and  at 
first  it  looked  as  if  the  plan  of  sacrificing  men 
freely  and  wearing  down  the  enemy  by  reckless 
attacks,  was  being  crowned  with  success.  To 
overwhelm  an  enemy  with  an  enormous  develop- 
ment of  artillery  fire  and  hurl  against  him  attack 
after  attack  of  infantry,  heedless  of  loss,  is  a  policy 
that  may  be  defended  as  more  economical  of  life 
and  effort  in  the  long  run,  if  a  swift  result  can 
be  obtained.  But  it  has  the  drawback  that  if 
these  costly  attacks  do  not  quickly  break  down 
the  opponent's  resistance  and  the  war  drags  on, 
the  strain  on  the  nation  is  out  of  all  proportion 
to  the  results  obtained.  And  there  is  the  further 
danger  that,  inasmuch  as  such  methods  at  the 
outset  of  a  war  mean  heavy  losses  among  the 
best  and  most  enterprising  of  the  officers  and 
the  trained  troops  of  the  first  line,  the  fighting 


HOW  THE  GERMANS  FIGHT          99 

power  of  the  nation  will  greatly  deteriorate  in 
the  second  stage  of  the  war. 

It  has  already  been  remarked  that  a  leading 
feature  of  German  battle  tactics  in  the  present 
war  has  been  the  reliance  on  artillery  and  machine- 
gun  fire.  It  has  even  been  said  that  in  some 
of  the  battles  it  seemed  as  if  the  infantry  were 
rather  being  used  as  an  escort  for  these  weapons 
than  as  itself  the  main  arm  of  attack.  This  is 
probably  an  exaggeration.  But  five  years  ago 
one  of  the  best  known  of  German  military 
writers,  General  Von  Bernhardi,  expressed  the 
opinion  that,  if  anything,  too  much  reliance  was 
being  placed  upon  mechanical  elements  in  war. 
He  is  a  writer  who  has  ventured  very  freely 
to  criticise  the  methods  of  his  own  army,  and 
he  went  so  far  as  to  say  that  it  might  be  a  danger 
for  Germany  in  a  future  war  if  the  infantry  who 
had  so  far  been  the  main  element  in  the  winning 
of  battles,  came  to  depend  upon  elaborately 
improved  cannon  and  machine  guns  to  crush 
the  enemy's  resistance,  instead  of  relying  on 
their  own  rifles  and  bayonets  as  the  weapons 
that  would  give  victory.  Rightly  or  wrongly,  it 
has  been  said  that  in  the  present  war  the  German 
infantry  firing  is  not  as  efficient  as  it  was  expected 
to  be,  that  brave  as  the  men  undoubtedly  are, 
their  attacks  have  only  succeeded  where  the 
gunners  had  already  all  but  completely  shattered 
the  resistance  of  their  opponents,  and  that  their 
advance  has  been  brought  to  a  standstill  much 
more  easily  than  was  the  case  in  1870,  not 
because  the  men  themselves  showed  any  lack 
of  courage,  but  because  their  training  had  not 


ioo     THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

prepared  them  to  use  their  rifles  to  any  real 
effect.  If  this  be  true,  it  would  seem  to  confirm 
Bernhardi's  criticism,  and  suggest  that  so  much 
attention  has  been  devoted  to  the  development 
of  the  artillery  as  to  lead  to  slackness  or  negligence 
in  the  infantry  training  of  the  German  army. 


)      •       >  ,      > 


CHAPTER  VII 
GERMANY  ON  THE  DEFENSIVE 

THE  FORTRESS-SYSTEM  OF  THE  GERMAN  EMPIRE 


of  Frederick  the  Great's  sayings  was, 
that  "  The  best  place  for  war  was  in  an 
enemy's  country,  the  next  best  in  a  neutral 
country,  and  the  worst  of  all  in  one's  own." 
Von  Moltke  put  the  idea  in  another  way,  when 
he  said  that  the  best  way  to  defend  a  frontier 
was  to  make  a  vigorous  attack  across  it.  The 
German  tradition  therefore  is  that  the  empire 
is  to  be  defended  by  taking  the  offensive. 

In  1871,  in  accordance  with  this  idea,  by  far 
the  greater  number  of  the  old  fortified  towns  of 
Germany  were,  to  use  the  technical  term,  de- 
classed. They  were  struck  off  the  list  of  the 
fortresses,  and  their  walls  and  ramparts  were 
demolished  to  provide  sites  for  new  boulevards. 
Even  the  fortresses  that  were  retained,  and 
improved  were  regarded  as  not  primarily  defen- 
sive, but  rather  as  the  entrenched  camps  that 
would  protect  the  mobilisation  area  and  provide 
room  within  the  circle  of  their  advanced  forts 
for  great  magazines  of  warlike  stores.  The 
number  of  fortresses  was  purposely  limited,  as 
it  was  held  that  there  was  more  loss  than  gain 


101 


102      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

in  shutting  up  large  garrisons  behind  their 
works  :  the  fewer  men  thus  employed  the  more 
there  would  be  for  the  field  armies. 

When  the  French  began  to  construct  the 
line  of  fortifications  along  their  eastern  frontier 
— the  entrenched  camps  of  Belfort,  Epinal,  Toul 
and  Verdun,  and  the  lines  of  forts  between  them 
• — German  military  critics  ridiculed  the  project, 
wrote  of  it  as  a  "  new  Chinese  wall,"  and  pointed 
to  it  as  a  confession  of  weakness  on  the  part  of 
France.  The  events  of  the  present  war  have 
shown  the  wisdom  of  creating  this  fortress  barrier, 
but  in  1875  the  Germans  pointed  to  it  as  a  proof 
that  the  French  army  was  incapable  of  holding 
the  open  field,  and  contrasted  with  it  the  defences 
of  their  own  frontier,  where  they  had  only  the 
two  fortresses  of  Metz  and  Strasburg,  and 
depended  for  the  defence  of  the  country,  not  on 
these  entrenched  camps,  but  on  their  power  of 
throwing  a  great  army  across  the  border  within 
a  few  days  of  the  declaration  of  war. 

But  since  those  days,  when  a  proud  confidence 
in  their  fighting  power — the  result  of  recent 
victories — made  the  Germans  depreciate  to  an 
exaggerated  extent  the  use  of  fortresses,  there 
has  been  a  marked  change  in  the  views  and 
policy  of  the  Berlin  General  Staff  in  this  respect. 
The  reorganisation  and  growing  efficiency  of  the 
French  army  and  the  prospect  of  having  to 
carry  on  '  a  war  on  two  fronts,"  as  the  result 
of  the  alliance  between  France  and  Russia,  has 
led  in  the  last  twenty  years  to  a  considerable 
extension  of  the  fortress  system  of  the  German 
empire.  It  was  realised  that  Germany  was 


GERMANY  ON  THE  DEFENSIVE    103 

no  longer  relatively  so  powerful  as  she  had  been 
in  the  years  after  the  Franco-German  war,  and 
that  she  might  be  compelled  to  fight  on  the 
defensive  on  the  eastern  or  western  frontier,  or 
on  both  at  the  same  time. 

The  German  Empire  has,  broadly  speaking, 
four  frontiers  :  the  northern  chiefly  on  the  sea, 
the  western  towards  France,  the  eastern  towards 
Russia,  and  the  southern  towards  Austria  and 
Switzerland.  This  last  frontier  has  been  left 
almost  entirely  without  permanent  defences,  as 
Austria  is  the  ally  of  Germany,  and  Switzerland  a 
neutral  country,  not  likely  to  be  involved  in 
any  war. 

The  defences  of  the  northern  or  sea  frontier 
are  intended  not  so  much  for  any  military 
purpose  as  to  supply  a  base  for  the  operations 
of  the  German  navy.  All  the  river  mouths 
and  harbours  are  defended  by  batteries  and 
mine-fields.  Heligoland  forms  a  strongly  fortified 
advanced  post  in  the  North  Sea,  the  line  of  the 
Kiel  Canal  is  defended  by  forts,  and  at  the  extreme 
eastern  end  of  the  long  line  of  coast  defences,  the 
fortresses  of  Konigsberg,  Pillau  and  Dantzic  form 
at  the  same  time  a  part  of  the  coast  system 
of  fortifications,  and  the  northern  wing  of  the 
fortified  line  which  defends  Germany  against 
Russia. 

On  the  western  frontier  there  is  a  double  line 
of  defence.  The  first  line  is  provided  by  the 
frontier  fortresses,  the  second  line  is  that  of  the 
river  Rhine.  The  two  great  strongholds  of  the 
frontier  are  Metz  and  Strasburg.  When  these 
places  were  annexed  in  1871,  Strasburg  was 


104      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

defended  only  by  an  out-of-date  system  of 
ramparts  and  bastions,  and  at  Metz,  in  addition 
to  the  older  works,  a  few  advanced  forts  had  been 
constructed  just  before  the  war.  Some  of  these 
were,  in  fact,  unfinished  when  the  war  began, 
and  up  to  the  last  moment  workmen  had  been 
busy  upon  them,  many  of  them  Germans  who 
went  back  to  their  regiments  with  a  very  com- 
plete knowledge  of  the  new  defences.  The 
Germans  entirely  reconstructed  the  defences  of 
both  places,  surrounded  them  with  a  circle  of 
strong  advanced  forts  and  providing  them  with 
magazines  of  materials  for  rapidly  strengthening 
and  enlarging  the  defences  in  case  of  war.  Thion- 
ville,  a  small  fortress  to  the  north  of  Metz,  was 
re-named  Diedenhofen,  and  surrounded  with  new 
works  just  sufficiently  strong  to  prevent  it  from 
being  captured  by  a  coup  de  mam.  This  was 
done  because  it  was  an  important  railway  junction 
which  would  be  of  considerable  use  in  the  con- 
centration of  an  army  on  the  frontiers  of  Lorraine. 
The  only  other  old  fortress  which  was  maintained 
on  this  frontier  was  the  little  hill  fort  of  Bitche 
in  the  northern  Vosges.  It  barred  an  important 
pass  and  a  line  of  railway.  In  the  war  of  1870 
it  had  been  besieged  in  the  beginning  of  August 
and  was  still  holding  out  when  the  armistice 
ended  the  war  in  the  following  January.  Its 
obstinate  resistance  deprived  the  Germans  of  the 
use  of  the  railway  line,  and  this  suggested  that  it 
was  a  place  worth  preserving,  though  in  doing 
this  the  one  exception  was  made  to  the  accepted 
rule  that  small  fortresses  were  not  to  be  considered 
as  of  any  value. 


GERMANY  ON  THE  DEFENSIVE     105 

In  case  of  invasion  from  the  westward,  the  main 
line  of  defence  is  not  on  the  frontier,  but  along 
the  Rhine.  In  recent  years  a  considerable 
amount  of  work  has  been  done  to  strengthen 
it.  The  general  scheme  for  the  defence  is  the 
establishment  of  great  fortresses  at  the  points 
where  tributary  rivers  join  the  main  stream,  and 
at  the  chief  railway  crossings  and  junctions  along 
the  river  itself.  Lines  of  railway  run  along 
both  banks  of  the  river,  and  on  its  eastern  bank 
the  whole  railway  system  lends  itself  to  the 
movement  of  reinforcements  rapidly  to  any 
threatened  point. 

Beginning  at  the  south  end  of  the  line  Stras- 
burg,  though  not  actually  on  the  river  but  on  its 
tributary  the  111,  is  practically  a  Rhine  fortress. 
On  its  eastern  front  its  advanced  works  extend 
to  the  river  bank,  and  the  great  railway  bridge 
across  the  Rhine  is  covered  by  these  forts  and 
further  protected  by  a  fortified  bridge  head  at 
Kehl  on  the  east  bank.  In  Alsace  itself  the 
approaches  to  Strasburg  and  the  river  crossing 
are  further  defended  by  outlying  works  at  Neu 
Breisach,  Molsheim,  Mutzig,  and  Dangolsheim. 
The  Rhine  bridges  at  Neu  Breisach  and  Huningin, 
near  the  Swiss  frontier,  are  defended  by  four 
armoured  towers,  two  on  each  bank,  mounting 
heavy  artillery. 

Following  the  course  of  the  river  northwards, 
the  next  railway  bridge  is  at  Rastatt.  The  place 
was  formerly  an  important  fortress,  but  for 
many  years  after  1870  it  was  an  open  town. 
When  the  new  policy  of  increasing  the  fortifica- 
tions was  adopted,  three  forts  were  erected  at 


106      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

Rastatt  to  protect  the  road  and  railway  crossing 
on  the  river.  North  of  Rastatt  the  middle 
course  of  the  river  is  protected  by  four  fortresses 
of  the  first  rank — Germersheim,  Mainz,  Coblentz, 
and  Cologne.  All  four  have  a  circle  of  advanced 
forts  on  both  sides  of  the  river.  Mainz  has  played 
a  part  in  nearly  every  great  war  on  the  Rhine, 
and  has  stood  innumerable  sieges.  It  stands 
at  the  meeting  point  of  several  roads  and  railways, 
and  at  the  place  where  the  Main  valley  opening 
on  the  Rhine  forms  a  natural  highway  into 
central  Germany.  The  old  fortifications,  de- 
molished after  1870,  have  been  replaced  by  a 
triple  line  of  works. 

Coblentz,  at  the  junction  of  the  Moselle  and 
Rhine  valleys,  is  another  great  railway  centre. 
Its  defences  include  the  old  fortress  of  Ehrenbreit- 
stein  on  a  scarped  rock  on  the  east  bank  opposite 
the  city.  The  fortifications  looking  upon  the 
river,  to  which  tourists  are  admitted  for  the 
sake  of  the  wide  view  they  command,  are  the 
least  important  part  of  the  defences  on  this  side. 
The  modern  fortifications  of  Ehrenbreitstein  are 
a  series  of  batteries  and  redoubts  on  the  eastern 
slope  of  the  hill.  South  of  the  city  a  line  of 
works  extends  across  the  neck  of  land  from  the 
Rhine  to  the  Moselle,  and  on  the  other  side  of 
the  latter  river  there  are  strong  forts  in  the  plain 
below  its  confluence  with  the  Rhine. 

Cologne  is  the  most  extensive  of  all  the  Rhine 
fortresses.  The  country  round  is  almost  a  dead 
level,  an  ideal  site  for  an  entrenched  camp  on 
the  modern  system.  There  is  a  double  line  of 
defence,  the  outer  line  consists  of  a  circle  of 


GERMANY   ON   THE   DEFENSIVE     107 

twenty-two  works  (eight  forts,  twelve  redoubts 
an'd  two  batteries),  spaced  out  about  a  thousand 
yards  apart  on  a  circle  of  sixteen  miles.  Just 
inside  this  circle  and  placed  so  as  to  connect  the 
forts  with  ea.ch  other  there  is  a  military  road  and 
tramway  for  the  transport  of  ammunition  and 
supplies,  and  it  is  said  intended  also  as  the  track 
for  armoured  movable  batteries  of  heavy  guns. 
The  forts  and  the  military  road  are  hidden 
behind  screens  of  trees  and  looking  across  the 
plain  the  aspect  of  this  circle  of  fortifications  is 
that  of  the  margin  of  some  stretch  of  wooded 
country. 

The  inner  line  is  intended  rather  as  a  protection 
against  a  raid  between  the  forts  than  as  a  per- 
manent defence  against  serious  attacks.  It  is 
a  low  wall  with  a  parapet  for  rifle  fire  and  prepared 
positions  for  artillery  at  intervals. 

From  a  few  miles  above  Cologne  to  the  point 
where  the  Rhine  runs  into  Dutch  territory  the 
great  river  flows  through  a  wide  plain,  and  the 
banks  are  everywhere  low.  It  is,  therefore, 
adapted  for  defence  by  a  river  flotilla,  and  this 
has  been  provided  in  the  form  of  a  fleet  of  gun- 
boats under  the  control  of  the  military  authorities. 
On  the  lower  river  between  Cologne  and  Wesel  the 
railway  bridges  are  defended  by  armoured  towers, 
with  heavy  guns  mounted  on  turntables.  Wesel 
is  the  frontier  fortress  of  the  Rhine  towards 
Holland.  It  has  batteries  on  the  river  and  a 
circle  of  bastioned  ramparts  and  outlying  forts 
on  both  banks. 

Thus  the  Rhine  from  the  point  where  it  enters 
Germany  to  the  Dutch  frontier  bristles  with 


io8      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

fortifications.  It  is  perhaps  the  strongest  fortified 
river  line  in  the  world,  and  it  is  a  peculiarity 
of  all  the  great  fortresses  of  the  line  that  instead 
of  being  placed  on  the  east  side  of  the  river,  so 
that  the  Rhine  would  serve  as  a  kind  of  vast 
ditch  barring  the  approach  to  them,  they  are 
placed  on  the  west  side.  They  are  aggressive 
rather  than  merely  defensive,  and  intended  to 
be  the  points  from  which  armies  massed  under 
the  cover  of  their  works  would  strike  at  the 
flanks  or  menace  the  communications  of  an 
enemy  attempting  to  cross  the  river  between 
them. 

On  the  eastern  frontier  we  have  again  a 
double  line  of  defence,  first  the  frontier  fortresses, 
and  then  a  great  river  line.  But  in  this  case 
the  frontier  fortresses  have  been  made  especially 
strong  and  the  river  line  has  been  left  almost 
entirely  without  permanent  artificial  defences. 

The  fortified  frontier  line  towards  Russia 
is  made  up  of,  first,  the  defences  of  the  lower 
Vistula  ;  secondly,  the  fortresses  of  the  provinces 
of  Posen  and  of  Silesia.  All  East  Prussia  lies 
entirely  outside  the  fortified  frontier.  In  the 
present  war  it  has  been  twice  invaded  by  the 
Russians.  Its  defence  depends  entirely  on  the 
natural  difficulties  of  the  region  of  lakes,  marshes 
and  forests  that  covers  all  the  south  and  east  of  the 
province.  Along  the  sea  coast  and  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Vistula  is  the  fortified  region  of  Dantzic 
and  Konigsberg.  So  long  as  the  German  fleet 
is  strong  enough  to  keep  command  of  the  neigh- 
bouring waters  of  the  Baltic,  these  places  cannot 
be  starved  into  surrender,  and  besides  the  sea 


GERMANY  ON  THE  DEFENSIVE     109 

communication  between  them,  they  are  linked 
together  by  the  great  land-locked  lagoon  of  the 
Frisches  HafL  The  small  fortress  of  Pillau 
commands  its  narrow  entrance.  Konigsberg  is 
defended  by  a  circle  of  advanced  forts  and,  except 
in  the  hard  winter  season,  by  the  inundations 
along  the  hollow  of  the  Pregel  river.  Dantzic  is 
protected  towards  the  sea  by  the  batteries  of 
Weichselmunde  (the  "  Vistula  mouths  ").  It  is 
surrounded  by  advanced  forts,  and  covered  to 
the  eastward  by  the  swampy  delta  of  the  Vistula, 
with  the  small  fortresses  of  Dirschau  and  Marien- 
burg  protecting  the  railway  crossings  over  the 
river.  Further  up  the  Vistula  are  the  fortresses 
of  Graudenz  and  Thorn,  the  latter  a  huge 
entrenched  camp  covering  a  railway  junction 
near  the  point  where  the  Vistula  enters  German 
territory.  The  centre  of  the  defence  on  the 
western  frontier  of  Russian  Poland  is  the  Prussian 
fortress  of  Posen  on  the  river  Wartha,  a  place 
like  Thorn.  The  line  of  defence  is  prolonged 
through  Silesia  by  the  fortresses  along  the  upper 
Oder,  Glogau  and  Breslau — the  latter  until  quite 
lately  an  open  city  but  now  protected  by  a  circle 
of  earthworks  and  redoubts.  It  is  believed  that 
the  river  crossings  above  Breslau  are  now  being 
fortified  and  the  chain  of  defences  is  thus  carried 
on  to  the  Austrian  frontier  near  Cracow — itself 
a  fortress  of  the  first  rank. 

So  much  for  the  permanently  fortified  frontier. 
The  second  line  of  defence  against  a  Russian 
army  advancing  on  Berlin  is  the  middle  and 
lower  course  of  the  river  Oder.  On  this  line 
the  harbour  of  Stettin  at  the  river  mouth  is 


no      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

protected  by  forts  and  batteries,  but  there  are  no 
other  artificial  defences  except  the  small  fortress 
of  Kustrin  in  the  midst  of  the  marshes  where 
the  river  Wartha  runs  into  the  Oder. 

The  river  Oder  runs  through  a  wide  hollow  in 
the  plain  of  Eastern  Germany.  The  banks  are 
everywhere  low  and  easily  overflowed.  The 
course  of  the  river  is  a  network  of  branches  and 
backwaters  with  swampy  stretches  of  low  ground 
between  them,  and  here  and  there  a  wilderness 
of  pools  and  long  narrow  lakes.  This  tangle  of 
waterways  and  swamps  is  covered  in  many  places 
with  a  low  growth  of  willows  and  alders.  The 
whole  forms  a  most  formidable  obstacle,  and  the 
main  use  of  the  fortress  at  Kustrin  is  that  it 
provides  a  safe  passage  for  an  army  across  this 
barrier  of  water  courses  and  swamps  to  fall  upon 
the  flank  of  an  enemy  endeavouring  to  force  the 
passage  above  or  below  it.  No  doubt  in  the 
present  war  time  the  other  passages  of  the  river 
are  being  strengthened  by  entrenchments. 

Berlin  has  no  fortifications.  A  few  miles  to 
the  westward  is  the  fortress  of  Spandau,  con- 
taining within  its  walls  a  number  of  military 
establishments,  rifle  factories,  artillery  workshops, 
powder  magazines  and  the  like.  One  of  the 
towers  of  the  old  citadel  held  until  lately  the 
war  treasures  of  Germany,  some  millions  of 
coined  gold  which  had  been  waiting  there  for 
more  than  forty  years  to  be  used  to  fill  the  war 
chests  of  the  army  for  the  first  expenses  of  a 
campaign. 

Such  is  the  defensive  system  of  Germany, 
but  here  also  the  accepted  theory  is  that  in 


GERMANY  ON  THE  DEFENSIVE      in 

case  the  country  is  invaded  passive  defence  must 
end  in  failure,  that  the  fortresses  are  only  auxili- 
aries to  the  field  armies,  and  that  the  real  hope 
of  victory  must  be  based  not  on  a  resistance 
behind  stone  walls  and  earthen  ramparts,  but  on 
hard  fighting  and  energetic  movement  in  the  open 
field. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   GERMAN   LAW   OF   WAR 

YV7HAT  is  generally  known  as  the  law  or  custom 
*^  of  war  is  a  mass  of  written  and  unwritten 
traditions  as  to  the  proper  conduct  to  be  observed 
by  belligerents  towards  each  other  and  by 
armies  towards  the  civilian  population.  In  the 
course  of  centuries  it  has  gradually  become  more 
humane,  especially  where  European  armies  are 
acting  against  each  other,  and  not  against  half 
civilised  or  savage  dark  races.  Thus,  for  in- 
stance, no  general  would  now  dream  of  promising 
his  troops  two  or  three  days'  pillage  on  the 
capture  of  a  town  as  an  encouragement  to  them 
to  make  a  determined  effort  to  storm  it.  It  is 
no  longer  the  rule  that  quarter  may  be  refused 
to  men  who  make  a  desperate  defence  of  a 
hopeless  position,  and  prisoners  of  war  are  now 
treated  with  humanity  instead  of  being  regarded 
as  slaves. 

This  improvement  in  the  general  conduct  of 
war  is  partly  the  effect  of  the  influence  of  public 
opinion  gradually  modifying  the  established 
custom,  and  partly  the  result  of  written  agree- 
ments between  the  nations.  The  most  impor- 
tant of  these  is  the  Convention  of  Geneva,  which 


112 


THE  GERMAN  LAW  OF  WAR       113 

gives  special  protection  to  the  ambulance  and 
hospital  service  under  the  Red  Cross  flag. 
How  great  a  change  has  taken  place  in  this 
respect  may  be  judged  from  the  fact  that,  in 
the  American  War  of  Secession,  the  United 
States  Government  treated  quinine  as  contra- 
band of  war,  and  seized  supplies  of  it  destined 
for  the  Southern  armies.  At  the  time  there  was 
no  protest.  We  may  contrast  with  this  the 
fact  that  during  the  South  African  war  drugs 
and  medical  appliances  were  frequently  sent 
through  the  British  lines  to  the  Boer  com- 
manders, and  they  were  often  supplied  under  a 
flag  of  truce  with  the  temporary  services  of  our 
own  surgeons. 

In  one  respect,  however,  there  has  been  a 
certain  set-back  in  this  progress.  It  dates 
from  the  Napoleonic  wars.  The  armies  of  the 
seventeenth  century  generally  plundered  the 
country  in  which  they  were  operating.  But  in 
the  following  century  it  was  realised  that,  quite 
apart  from  the  misery  inflicted  on  the  popu- 
lation, this  was  bad  for  the  army  itself.  It 
was  a  wasteful  process  and  fatal  to  discipline  and 
order.  The  small  armies  of  professional  soldiers 
in  the  second  half  of  the  eighteenth  century 
depended  for  their  supplies  on  magazines  of 
provisions  formed  at  an  advanced  base  supple- 
mented by  purchases  paid  for  in  cash  in  the 
district  they  occupied.  The  result  of  a  strict 
observance  of  this  rule  produced  the  state 
of  things  which,  however  humane  it  was  in 
intention,  seems  to  us  nowadays  hopelessly 
unpractical,  and  almost  incredible.  Von  der 

H 


ii4      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

Goltz  gives  some  instances  of  what  happened  at 
a  time  when,  as  he  puts  it,  troops  sometimes 
camped  in  the  midst  of  cornfields  and  starved. 
He  tells  how  in  the  campaign  of  Jena  the  Prussian 
army  bivouacked  "  on  the  night  of  October  nth 
and  i2th  close  by  huge  piles  of  felled  wood  and 
perished  with  cold,  and  even  on  the  following 
day  remained  without  firewood  to  cook  their 
food,  and  it  was  only  decided  to  seize  those 
supplies  for  the  army  after  the  soldiers  had 
helped  themselves  and  felled  trees  in  the  neigh- 
bourhood.'' And  he  gives  this  further  instance 
from  the  same  campaign — 

"  The  supply  of  oats  for  the  horses  ran  short, 
while  plentiful  abundance  was  stored  at  Jena. 
But  although  the  French  were  on  the  advance  the 
Generalissimo  of  the  army  considered  himself 
obliged  to  write  to  the  supreme  ducal  adminis- 
trator at  Weimar  for  leave  to  purchase  what 
was  necessary.  What  the  answer  was  we  do  not 
know ;  but  this  we  do  know,  that  the  oats  fell  into 
the  enemy's  hands  and  French  horses  solved 
the  complicated  question.  Yet  the  ducal 
administrator  at  Weimar  was  no  ordinary 
man,  certainly  no  pedant,  being  none  other  than 
the  Privy  Councillor  and  Minister  of  State,  Von 
Goethe, '  a  tall,  handsome  man'-  -as  he  is  described 
by  a  contemporary — '  who  in  his  embroidered 
court-dress  with  powdered  hair  and  a  sword 
always  showed  himself  as  a  true  minister  and 
well  represented  the  dignity  appertaining  to 
his  rank.' 

Cliusewitz  tells  how  in  the  retreat  after  Auer- 
stadt,  when  a  battalion  of  Grenadiers  arrived  half 


THE  GERMAN  LAW  OF  WAR        115 

starved  in  a  village,  and  began  to  help  themselves 
to  provisions  without  any  arrangement  being 
made  for  purchase,  the  peasants  protested  and  an 
old  colonel  of  the  Guards  declared  they  were 
quite  right,  for  "  such  a  system  of  robbery  was 
quite  unknown  to  the  Prussian  army  and  repug- 
nant to  its  spirit."  Nowadays  the  peasants  would 
have  been  told  that  the  sooner  they  stopped 
protesting  the  better  for  them.  It  was  a  French 
Republican  army  that  introduced  or  revived  the 
system  of  living  on  the  country,  and  '  making 
war  support  itself."  Both  the  Republican  generals 
and  Napoleon  and  his  marshals,  besides  seizing 
everything  that  might  be  useful,  levied  con- 
tributions of  money  on  conquered  towns  and 
districts.  There  was  always  a  good  deal  of 
irregular  pillage  in  the  track  of  the  Grand  Army. 
Efforts  were  made  to  repress  it,  chiefly  because 
it  interfered  with  the  organised  requisitioning  of 
supplies  and  levying  of  contributions.  Most 
armies  now  recognise  that  while  pillage  must  be 
treated  as  a  crime  requisitions  are  a  necessity  and 
contributions,  if  not  excessive,  are  permissible. 
In  theory  the  requisition  is  ultimately  a  purchase. 
The  officer  who  makes  the  requisition  gives  a 
receipt  for  what  he  takes.  If  he  is  in  his  own 
country  this  is  to  be  paid  for  sooner  or  later  by 
the  government,  if  he  is  in  an  enemy's  country, 
the  victims  of  the  requisition  are  told  they  can 
apply  for  compensation  to  their  government  after 
the  war.  The  expense  thus  inflicted  on  the  hostile 
government  is  regarded  as  part  of  the  war 
indemnity  exacted  in  case  of  success.  Such 
proceedings  are  justified  on  the  ground  that  the 
army  must  live. 


n6      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

In  the  first  stage  of  the  Franco-Prussian  war 
the  Germans  generally  took  what  they  wanted 
by  way  of  requisition.  Later  on  they  found  that 
a  simpler  and  more  effective  plan  was  to  levy  a 
contribution  on  the  places  occupied  and  then 
with  its  proceeds  offer  to  buy  for  cash  what  they 
wanted.  There  was  then  no  motive  to  conceal 
supplies,  as  there  was  a  ready  market  for  them. 
It  is  said  that  there  were  even  cases  where 
the  retreating  French  troops  could  find  nothing 
in  the  country  towns,  but  when  the  Prussian 
supply  officers,  with  plenty  of  requisition  money 
in  their  hands,  announced  an  open  market,  the 
place  was  as  busy  as  on  a  fair  day. 

With  the  huge  armies  of  the  present  war,  an 
attempt  to  live  off  the  country  would  be  hopeless. 
They  must  depend  on  supplies  brought  up  by 
rail  and  motor  transport.  Requisitions  can  only 
supplement  such  supplies  to  a  very  moderate 
extent,  even  in  the  richest  districts,  but  the  right 
of  requisition  has  been  very  freely  exercised  by 
the  Germans.  No  complaint  can  be  made  of 
this.  A  ground  of  grievance  only  arises  when  the 
requisition  is  excessive.  It  is  alleged,  however, 
that  in  addition  to  requisitioning  there  has  been, 
in  many  cases,  irregular  pillage  and  wanton 
destruction  of  property.  This  of  course  is 
unlawful,  not  only  according  to  general  laws  of 
war,  but  according  to  German  military  law  itself, 
and  where  it  has  occurred  is  evidence  of  a  break- 
down of  discipline.  As  to  the  levying  of  con- 
tributions, the  Hague  Conventions  allow  these, 
but  stipulate  that  they  must  not  be  excessive 
or  vindictive,  and  must  be  regulated  by  the  real 


THE  GERMAN  LAW  OF  WAR       117 

needs  of  the  army.  Some  of  the  contributions 
reported  to  have  been  exacted  by  the  Germans 
certainly  seem  to  go  beyond  this  definition.  But 
the  practice  of  the  commanders  appears  to  have 
varied  very  widely.  In  some  cases  impossible 
sums  were  named,  while  in  others  great  con- 
sideration was  shown.  Thus,  for  instance,  on 
the  wealthy  city  of  Epernay  a  contribution  of 
£7,000  was  levied,  and  a  few  days  later  the  whole 
sum  was  handed  back  to  the  local  authorities 
'  in  recognition  of  the  care  they  had  taken  of 
the  German  wounded." 

So  much  for  the  practice  as  to  requisition  and 
contributions.  Another  phase  of  German  war 
methods  is  open  to  much  more  serious  question. 
It  is  that  which  concerns  the  oppressive  action 
taken  against  the  civil  population  on  the  plea 
that  they  had  been  guilty  of  practices  not  recog- 
nised by  the  law  of  war.  There  has  been  much 
debating  in  recent  years  as  to  the  practical 
working  of  the  right  of  civilians  to  take  up  arms 
to  oppose  an  invader.  The  theory  embodied 
in  the  legislation  of  the  Hague  conferences  may 
be  thus  summed  up.  As  a  general  principle,  it  is 
recognised  that  everyone,  whether  soldier  or 
civilian,  has  a  right  to  take  part  in  the  defence  of 
his  country  against  invasion.  But  it  is  also 
recognised  that  there  is  no  real  gain  but  much 
loss  and  widespread  resultant  misery  in  a  state 
of  things  in  which  the  population  of  an  occupied 
district  would  be  making  continual  attacks  upon 
isolated  individuals  and  small  parties,  while 
pretending  before  and  after  such  acts  to  be 
engaged  only  in  their  ordinary  peaceful  avocations. 


nS     THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

The  practical  ruling,  therefore,  is  that  if  men  not 
belonging  to  the  regularly  organised  forces  of  the 
country  take  to  the  warpath  they  must  be  under 
responsible  leaders,  observe  military  discipline, 
carry  their  arms  openly,  and  if  they  are  not 
uniformed  they  must  wear  continually  some 
distinctive  badge  that  can  be  easily  seen.  To 
put  it  briefly,  it  is  illegal  for  a  man  to  claim  the 
privileges  of  a  combatant  one  day  and  those  of  a 
peaceful  civilian  on  the  next,  he  must  choose  his 
part  and  stick  to  it.  But  there  is  a  notable 
exception  to  this  general  rule.  It  is  laid  down 
that  in  an  invaded  district  before  it  has  been 
effectually  occupied  by  the  enemy,  the  rule  need 
not  be  strictly  enforced  that  civilians  who 
co-operate  in  the  defence  must  be  organised  in 
regular  bodies  and  wear  distinctive  badges.  In 
our  own  army  regulations  it  is  laid  down  that  in 
dealing  with  armed  inhabitants  our  officers  must 
give  the  largest  interpretation  to  the  right  of 
men  to  assist  in  the  defence  of  their  country. 
This  is  a  generous  and  worthy  interpretation  of 
the  rule.  But,  unfortunately,  notwithstanding 
the  principles  laid  down  at  the  Hague  conferences, 
the  German  army  does  not  in  practice  give  this 
large  interpretation  to  them,  and  it  is  very  doubt- 
ful if  other  continental  armies  accept  the  Hague 
legislation  as  fully  as  we  do*. 

The  German  theory  on  the  subject  was  so 
well  known  that  when  the  neutrality  of  Belgium 
was  violated  the  Belgian  Government  warned  the 

*  In  some  of  the  Hague  conferences  the  German  delegates 
refused  to  accept  the  general  conclusions  arrived  at  on  this 
point. 


THE  GERMAN  LAW  OF  WAR       119 

people  against  attempting  any  irregular  armed 
resistance,  and  later  on  it  took  a  still  stronger 
step,  the  precise  reasons  for  which  it  is  still 
difficult  to  understand.  At  Liege  and  at  Brussels 
and  elsewhere  it  ordered  the  civic  guard  to  lay 
down  its  arms  and  take  no  part  in  the  military 
operations  on  the  ground  that  it  was  not  a 
regular  military  force.  Though  it  would  seem 
that  it  more  than  fulfilled  the  requirements  of 
the  Hague  legislation,  inasmuch  as  it  was  not 
merely  an  organised  force,  but  had  been  organised, 
uniformed  and  armed  for  more  than  fifty  years. 

These  incidents  show  how  thoroughly  it  was 
known  that  the  Hague  legislation  would  not 
stand  in  the  way  of  very  severe  measures  by 
the  invaders  against  all  opponents  outside  the 
regular  army.  The  position  taken  by  the 
Germans  in  this  matter  seems  on  the  face  of  it 
all  the  more  unjustifiable,  because  their  own  law 
provides  that  in  the  event  of  invasion  the  Land- 
sturm  may  be  called  out  as  a  levy  en  masse,  and 
need  not  wear  uniforms,  but  only  badges.  The 
argument  by  which  German  writers  try  to  justify 
their  position  is  that  the  interference  of  armed 
civilians  leads  only  to  useless  loss  of  life,  and 
that  unless  sternly  repressive  measures  are 
exercised,  it  is  impossible  to  secure  the  safety  of 
detachments  in  a  hostile  country.  They  hold 
it  is  a  case  of  self-preservation. 

The  sound  and  really  defensible  view  would  seem 
to  be  this.  During  an  invasion  there  are  two 
stages  in  any  given  district.  In  the  first  stage  a 
defence  is  being  carried  on  by  the  regular  troops, 
and  the  district  is  not  yet  conquered.  If  the 


1,20      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

defence  fails,  the  second  stage  comes,  in  which 
the  invader  has  successfully  occupied  the  district, 
and  the  regular  troops  are  withdrawn.  In  the 
first  stage  the  government  has  a  right  to  look 
to  all  its  subjects  to  assist  the  regular  troops. 
But  those  who  intend  to  continue  resistance 
must  throw  in  their  lot  with  the  army  to  which 
they  have  attached  themselves.  They  should 
then  have  the  full  rights  of  combatants.  If  the 
army  is  forced  to  withdraw,  they  should  either 
go  with  it,  or  if  they  wish  to  remain  behind  they 
must  surrender,  or  at  least  disarm.  They  cannot 
plead  the  regular  combatant's  right  to  immunity 
if  they  conceal  their  weapons  and  use  them 
furtively  to  take  the  life  of  some  unfortunate 
soldier  of  the  force  occupying  the  district. 

But  in  practice,  the  Germans  do  not  make  this 
distinction.  Not  only  have  civilians  in  Belgium 
who  took  part  in  the  fighting  been  refused 
quarter,  but  houses  from  which  shots  were  fired 
were  burned,  and  every  man  found  in  them  shot. 
Punishment  has  also  been  inflicted  for  resistance 
by  a  few  individuals  on  a  whole  town  or  district. 
This  is  a  direct  violation  of  the  Hague  legislation, 
which  lays  down  that  such  general  reprisals  for 
the  acts  of  individuals  are  not  permissible. 

It  is  easy  to  understand  how  this  theory  that 
the  civil  population  has  no  right  to  take  part 
in  the  defence  of  the  country  and  the  further 
theory  that  a  whole  town  or  village  may  be 
punished  for  the  armed  resistance  or  insurrection 
of  some  of  its  inhabitants,  leads  in  practice  to 
atrocious  acts  of  widespread  cruelty.  This  has 
nothing  to  do  with  acts  of  cruelty  or  outrage  on  the 


THE  GERMAN  LAW  OF  WAR       121 

part  of  individuals  in  the  invading  army.  Such 
ugly  incidents  will  happen  in  war  when  men  of 
all  kinds  are  swept  into  the  ranks  of  the  army, 
and  when  discipline  breaks  down.  Men  utterly 
unfitted  for  such  a  position  are  put  by  the  chapter 
of  accidents  in  absolute  control  of  a  conquered 
population,  and  there  are  times  when  panic 
makes  men  of  ill-balanced  character  weakly  cruel, 
in  the  misdirected  effort  to  appear  strong.  The 
real  blot  upon  the  German  method  of  making 
war  is  that  the  humane  legislation  of  the  Hague 
conferences  has  been  disregarded.  The  right 
of  the  citizen  to  defend  his  country,  even 
within  the  limit  set  forth  in  that  legislation,  has 
been  disregarded,  and  even  the  measures  of 
repression  adopted  have  been  carried  through 
with  a  cruelty  which  was  quite  needless,  even  if 
we  grant  that  the  action  itself  was  justified. 

The  German  law  of  war  also  recognises  as  an 
ordinary  measure  the  seizure  of  hostages  in  an 
occupied  place.  These  hostages  being  responsible 
with  their  lives  for  complete  order  being  preserved. 
It  must  in  fairness  be  said  that  the  system  is  not 
peculiar  to  the  German  army.  To  us  in  England 
it  seems  not  only  a  hateful,  but  a  stupid  pro- 
ceeding ;  for  one  would  think  that  the  peace  and 
order  of  an  occupied  town  might  be  much  better 
secured  by  inviting  the  leading  inhabitants  to 
use  their  influence  to  prevent  any  hot-headed 
individuals  from  making  useless  attacks  on  the 
garrison,  and  to  enable  them  to  do  this  it  would 
be  a  more  practical  course  to  leave  them  at 
liberty.  But  whatever  may  be  said  of  the 
practice,  one  finds  it  recommended  by  military 


122     THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

writers  of  many  continental  armies.  Thus  for 
instance,  a  standard  French  treatise  on  cavalry 
tactics  recommends  an  officer  in  command  of  a 
cavalry  patrol  to  seize  some  of  the  principal 
inhabitants,  when  he  enters  a  hostile  village,  and 
let  it  be  known  that  he  holds  them  as  hostages 
for  the  security  of  his  own  party,  The  system  of 
hostages  is  thus  not  peculiar  to  the  German  army. 
One  can  only  regard  it  as  one  of  those  abuses 
which  one  hopes  civilised  nations  will  abandon 
when,  after  the  war,  an  effort  is  made  to  bring  the 
whole  practice  of  belligerents  to  a  higher  level. 
It  is  strange  that  any  people  should  regard  it  as 
justifiable  to  punish  men  with  death  for  the 
acts  of  others  when,  by  the  mere  fact  of  their 
having  been  deprived  of  their  libertjr,  it  is  impos- 
sible for  them  to  control  or  influence  these  actions. 


CHAPTER  IX 

GERMAN  IDEAS  ON  THE  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND 

CONTINENTAL  military  writers  would  seem 
to  be  particularly  attracted  by  discussions 
as  to  how  England  might  be  invaded.  At  the 
time  when  there  were  still  many  open  questions 
waiting  for  settlement  between  France  and  Great 
Britain,  and  many  thought  the  existing  tension 
might  end  in  war,  the  French  military  Press  fully 
discussed  the  subject.  It  was  at  this  time,  too, 
that  one  of  the  leading  military  reviews  of  Berlin 
published  two  articles  on  the  invasion  of  this 
country  which,  it  was  afterwards  known,  were  the 
work  of  a  military  attache  at  the  German  Embassy 
in  London.  The  question  was  treated  as  a  purely 
speculative  problem,  and  much  of  the  space  was 
devoted  to  an  account  of  various  projects  for 
and  attempts  at  invasion  in  the  past. 

The  basis  of  this  essay,  which  may  be  taken 
as  typical  of  much  other  writing  on  the  subject, 
was  an  account  of  Napoleon's  plan  of  invasion, 
and  a  discussion  as  to  how  far  modern  conditions 
had  increased  or  diminished  the  chances  of 
success  for  a  similar  project.  As  usual  it  was 
assumed  that  a  very  moderate  force  once  landed  in 
England  would  be  certain  to  fight  its  way  to  Lon- 
don in  a  few  days,  and  that  with  the  occupation 

123 


124      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

of  London  all  hope  of  resistance  would  end. 
The  writer  suggested  that  the  attempt  would  be 
made  when  most  of  the  British  regular  army  was 
employed  on  some  distant  oversea  expedition, 
and  he  assumed  that  no  troops  would  be  left  in 
England,  except  volunteers  and  militia,  the 
military  value  of  which  he  set  at  the  very  lowest. 

It  is  remarkable  how,  not  in  this  case  only,  but 
even  in  more  recent  years,  one  finds  in  continental 
military  literature  the  echo  of  party  attacks  on 
our  English  military  system.  The  advocates  of 
universal  military  service  in  England  in  the  years 
before  the  war  would  be  surprised  if  they  read 
the  many  military  pamphlets  and  articles 
published  not  only  in  Germany,  but  also  in 
France  which  reproduced  their  depreciation  of 
the  regular  army  and  the  Territorials,  in  order 
to  show  that  England  under  the  voluntary  system 
of  recruiting  was  incapable  of  producing  a 
military  force  that  would  count  for  anything 
serious  in  a  great  European  war.  The  German 
writers  on  the  invasion  of  England  were  able  by 
such  quotations  to  prove  to  their  own  satisfaction, 
that  once  our  small  regular  army  was  sent  abroad 
there  would  be  nothing  left  to  defend  the  country 
but  a  mob  of  '  men  with  muskets."  Our 
experiences  in  the  opening  months  of  the  great 
war  have  sufficiently  shown  how  wide  of  the 
mark  these  anticipations  were,  but  it  must  be 
said  that  they  were  based  almost  entirely  on 
English  evidence. 

Those  who  wrote  of  the  invasion  of  England 
as  a  possibility  always  insisted  on  the  fact  that 
the  growth  of  the  German  mercantile  marine,  the 


IDEAS  ON  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND  125 

possession  of  fleets  of  large  steamers,  and  the 
facilities  afforded  by  the  North  German  Ports  made 
it  possible  to  embark  a  very  large  force  within 
twenty-four  hours,  only  a  moderate  number  of 
transports  being  necessary,  because  for  the  short 
voyage  the  men  might  be  crowded  together  like 
excursionists  on  a  Bank  Holiday.  They  showed 
plainly  enough  that  the  embarkation  of  the 
force  would  be  a  fairly  simple  matter.  They 
also  proved  to  their  own  satisfaction  that  once  a 
hundred  thousand  men  were  upon  English  ground 
they  could  deal  with  anything  brought  against 
them.  But  the  weak  point  of  all  the  arguments 
has  always  been  a  complete  shirking  of  the  real 
difficulties  of  the  problem.  Perhaps  soldiers  are 
too  much  inclined  to  under-rate  the  importance 
of  sea  power.  It  was  a  distinguished  French 
soldier  who  said  that  the  passage  of  the  English 
Channel  by  an  invading  army  was  essentially  the 
same  thing  as  the  crossing  of  a  wide  river,  and 
that  a  river  line  had  seldom  been  successfully 
defended  against  a  determined  effort  to  force  it. 
This  writer  left  out  of  account  the  fact  that  it 
is  very  seldom  that  even  the  widest  river  has 
been  defended  by  a  fleet  of  warships.  When  the 
Russians  crossed  the  Danube  in  1877  there  were 
Turkish  monitors  on  the  lower  river,  and  they 
had  to  be  destroyed  or  driven  off  before  the  river 
was  bridged  at  Simnitza  and  the  invasion  of 
Bulgaria  begun.  The  narrow  seas  around  England 
would  be  no  more  of  an  obstacle  than  a  wide 
river,  if  there  were  no  British  fleet  upon  them. 
But  as  long  as  that  fleet  holds  command  of  the 
sea  invasion  is  impossible.  This  is  the  lesson  of 


I26      THE  GERMAN  ARMY  IN  WAR 

all  past  history.  Napoleon's  project  depended 
upon  the  luring  away  of  the  fleet,  and  a  surprise 
concentration  of  his  own  squadrons  in  the  Channel. 
Wireless  telegraphy  has  in  our  days  made  such 
projects  hopeless.  And  even  if  we  suppose,  for  the 
sake  of  argument,  that  the  main  battle  fleet  could 
be  thus  lured  away,  the  huge  transports  necessary 
for  an  invasion  would  have  to  make  their  voyage 
in  the  face  of  attacks  from  swarms  of  light 
torpedo  craft,  from  which  they  could  not  conceal 
their  movements,  and  whose  onset  would  mean 
wholesale  destruction.  The  most  an  enemy 
could  accomplish  would  be  the  landing  of  a  small 
raiding  force  by  surprise,  even  this  would  be 
difficult,  and  it  could  have  no  serious  results. 

The  appearance  of  hostile  squadrons  off 
Yarmouth  in  October,  and  off  Scarborough  and 
Hartlepool  in  December,  may  be  taken  as  fair 
samples  of  what  a  surprise  visit  to  our  shores 
can  be.  Though  the  enemy's  ships  evaded  our 
cruisers,  they  knew  that  their  appearance  was 
at  once  signalled  far  and  wide  by  wireless 
warnings,  and  that  British  ships  would  soon  be 
gathering  around  them.  Within  an  hour 
they  steamed  out  to  sea  to  make  their  escape. 
But  to  land  even  a  small  force  the  trans- 
ports and  the  covering  flotilla  would  have 
to  lie  off  the  shore  for  many  hours.  During 
this  time  they  must  inevitably  be  attacked. 
The  only  thing  that  would  secure  them  immu- 
nity from  attack  and  the  safe  command 
of  sufficient  time  to  land  tens  of  thousands 
of  men  with  their  artillery  and  horses  would 
be  the  command  of  the  seas.  So  we  always  come 


IDEAS  ON  INVASION  OF  ENGLAND  127 

back  to  the  same  underlying  conditions  of  the 
whole  problem.  While  our  fleet  is  in  being 
invasion  is  impossible.  And  it  would  be  equally 
impossible  so  long  as  we  held  the  command  of 
the  sea  even  if  we  had  not  a  single  friend 
in  the  world,  and  all  the  armies  of  Europe  were 
encamped  in  millions  along  the  coasts  from 
Hamburg  to  Cherbourg,  waiting  for  a  chance  to 
get  across. 

It  may  be  asked,  therefore,  why  have  a  home 
defence  army  ?  The  answer  is  very  simple. 
Raids  on  a  small  scale  are  possible,  the  home 
defence  army  exists  to  make  such  a  raid  futile 
and  to  force  an  enemy  who  contemplates  a  raid  to 
recognise  that  to  do  anything  it  must  be  made  on 
a  large  scale.  Now,  the  larger  the  force  employed 
on  such  an  enterprise  the  greater  the  difficulty 
of  the  crowd  of  transports  conveying  it  being 
able  to  escape  observation.  The  smaller,  there- 
fore, is  the  prospect  of  the  attempt  ever  being 
seriously  made.  Nevertheless,  German  and  other 
writers  who  have  not  grasped  the  essential  con- 
ditions of  any  invasion  of  England  will  no 
doubt  continue  to  discuss  it  in  serious  military 
reviews  and  in  the  lighter  columns  of  the  news- 
paper and  magazine.  But  there  is  no  reason 
why  anyone  in  England  should  have  a  moment's 
anxiety  on  the  subject,  or  regard  these  literary 
exercises  as  anything  more  than  unpractical 
theorising,  which  may  amuse  and  interest  its 
German  readers,  but  does  us  no  harm  and  leads 
nowhere. 


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